


The Road to Hell

by Eireann



Series: Good Intentions [2]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-18 09:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 33,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8156981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eireann/pseuds/Eireann
Summary: 'Shuttlepod One' had a happy ending.But what if it didn't?





	1. Reed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexBRX](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=AlexBRX).



> Star Trek and all its intellectual property belongs to Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.
> 
> This story has not been beta read and all mistakes are mine (if you find one, please let me know so I can correct it).
> 
> Author's Notes.
> 
> Firstly and most importantly: This is a very dark and strictly AU story. It was started as a challenge and I'm breaking my usual MO by posting the first chapter before I've finished writing the story. Possibly because this is because I'm checking to find how many brickbats get thrown at me, because I don't think a lot of people are going to like it. However, I think it's a legitimate question and I'm positing a legitimate development.
> 
> This means that updates will be slow in coming - assuming I have anyone left interested in reading them...
> 
> I shall be curious for the reactions. And, I admit it, slightly apprehensive.
> 
> Secondly, the fact that I have emigrated to Siberia is a complete coincidence....

_‘I’m not about to accept that it was all for nothing’._

The words ran through Malcolm’s mind over and over again; his own words, slurred with bourbon, desperation and bitterness.

He didn’t know what Trip had made of his confession.  Perhaps it was the suggestion that they were, indeed, wasting air by shouting that had made the chief engineer settle down on the bench beside him, each wrapped in one inadequate blanket and sitting pressed together in the hope of thus conserving even a little of the precious body-heat being inexorably radiated into the freezing air of the shuttlepod.

The silence felt sullen, reverting to the animosity that had followed the shock and grief of their discovery that _Enterprise_ was lost and their own fate sealed.  The hours afterwards had been ugly, the contrast between their differing methods of dealing with their situation producing one confrontation after another and culminating in that last almighty quarrel when Trip had tried to sacrifice his own life in order to double his companion’s remaining oxygen supply.  Almost immediately after that the doubts and self-recrimination had set in, spurred on by the American’s shout during their vicious exchange that Malcolm should stop trying to be a hero, ‘it doesn’t suit you’.

It wasn’t difficult to understand that having keyed himself up to suicide, being halted in the act by a pistol-wielding subordinate (or more correctly ‘insubordinate’) officer would ignite Tucker’s temper.  Malcolm was well aware that for all his basic good nature, his friend was occasionally given to engaging his mouth before putting his brain into gear, and had fully expected to receive the due tongue-lashing.  But although it was of course completely impossible for Trip to know how cruel that particular accusation would feel, still it carried the force of a rifle-butt across the face.

Conversation having effectively ended,  Malcolm now had nothing much better to do than reflect on the fact that the man he’d come to regard as his best friend thought that not only was he the Angel of Death, but that he was pretending to be acting out of a courage he actually didn’t possess.

He’d never regarded himself as a hero.  Certainly his refusal to let Trip die didn’t feel like an attempt at heroics, however it had appeared to the ungrateful recipient.  If anything, his outburst had been an admission of a weakness his father would have deplored: his despair at the prospect of dying – or, worse still, surviving – alone.

He had, indeed, invested much time and effort in trying to reach a cautious accord with Trip Tucker.  For a man who’d long ago concluded – with reason – that _friends are people who betray you_ this was a colossal leap of faith.  Before he’d come aboard _Enterprise_ he’d genuinely believed that apart from one or two members of his family no-one, ever, would mean anything to him again.  Indeed, he had every intention of ensuring that they didn’t.  This determination was made easier to uphold by the inflexible front of the persona he’d adopted.  The armoured Armoury Officer kept people very much at a distance, where both he and they were far safer.

Trip, however, hadn’t read the manual.  With his own personal brand of exasperating and ebullient charm he’d somehow managed to worm his way through some unsuspected tiny chink in his junior officer’s formidable armour-plating.  Not even slightly deterred by the cool formality with which Malcolm had initially repelled any attempts at familiarity, he’d finally succeeded in thawing a part of the Englishman’s heart that had long felt as though it were sealed in permafrost.

The change had not come about without perplexity and pain.  The long years of Malcolm’s servitude to Section 31 had given him ample confirmation of his suspicions that humanity was not to be trusted.  He hadn’t wanted to be persuaded out of that comfortable belief, to be coaxed into confiding his trust in a man he hardly knew.  But it had happened somehow, against his will and almost without his knowing; certainly without his realising how deeply he’d come to depend on Trip’s companionship until the awful moment he’d seen him clambering painfully into the shuttlepod’s airlock to die.

His reaction then had been one completely lacking in the self-control on which he usually prided himself.  His father would have termed it ‘hysterical’, and the description wouldn’t have been all that far out at that; certainly it was light-years from the proper obedience expected of an officer and a Reed.  Whatever he felt about his superior’s actions, it was not his province to question them – still less to indulge in a screaming tantrum and compel the man at gunpoint to abandon his plans, for no better reason than his own selfish determination to cling on to a hopeless hope that there just possibly might still be a future for both of them.

But the slow minutes had crawled past, morphing into still slower hours, and the temperature had continued its stealthy fall, and _Enterprise_ had not come.  Belief, never strong, ebbed away.  Detonating the engine had been a long shot at best; and it seemed that despite losing the battle over possession of the bourbon, the galaxy was, after all, to have the last laugh.

It was some consolation that the starship had not, after all, been lost in some catastrophic collision with an asteroid, as the wreckage there had suggested.  What actually _had_ happened, they’d probably never know; shortly after summoning sufficient activity to transmit that one message from the ship the comm unit had relapsed, and even Trip’s expertise hadn’t been up to the task of resurrecting it again.  But at least the men and women who’d begun to feel like a family to him were still alive, and that was something for which he could be genuinely and deeply grateful.  Although it seemed that his final throw of the dice had been a losing one, the adventure would go on, even if he and Trip would no longer be a part of it.

The cold inside the shuttlepod now was absolutely savage.  His arms and legs were completely without feeling.  Beside him, the man he’d thought of as a friend shook with repeated tremors, far too intense to be called ‘shivers’; his core temperature was beginning to fall.  Without doubt he too felt as though an iron band was clamped around his temples, one of the side effects of oxygen deprivation.

Breathing, done for so long without thought, had now become an exhausting labour.  Desperate to get more of the life-giving oxygen from air growing thinner and fouler with every moment, their lungs were working like bellows.  Malcolm had tried to conceal it at first, but of course the needs of his body had taken over.  Now they were both drawing in great hoarse gasps, ignoring the way the cold tore at their throats, and there was never enough, never nearly enough, and it was a cruel, long-drawn-out way to die....

He couldn’t have said when the thought first crept into his mind.  At first he’d shoved it away, repelled, refusing to admit that things could possibly be that bad.  But now they _were_ that bad, and they were only going to get worse.  Already the sheer effort of staying upright was sapping what little strength he had left.

If he was going to act at all, he’d have to act soon.  Bloody soon.

Drowning.  He was drowning after all, drowning slowly, without a drop of water in sight.  The irony was enough to kill him, if suffocation didn’t get there first.

The iron band stealthily tightened around his forehead.  His heart was thundering, trying to compensate for the shortfall in quality by increasing the quantity of blood to supply his internal organs.

Cold, cold, he was so bloody cold.  It had ceased to be a sensation, and was now an existence.

He and Trip were all that was keeping each other upright.  Soon one or other of them would slip, and then they’d both hit the floor.  He didn’t know how they’d land.  Maybe they’d fall facing one another, and all that there would be left for him to do during the time remaining to him was to watch his friend fight a losing battle for life.  A slow, agonising battle, his face cyanosed, his body seizing before it finally lapsed into coma and brain death.

Compared to that, the quick agony of hard vacuum would have been merciful.  Perhaps the engineer was already regretting allowing the damned Brit to force him down from the airlock to face this infinitely crueller end.

The thought returned.  It was stronger now, and more persuasive.  _It’s your fault he’s still alive.  If you hadn’t interfered he’d be out of his suffering by now._

Most of their options were long gone.  Neither of them probably even had the strength to stand, so reaching the ‘pod’s controls were out of the question.

The hand that still clutched the blanket closed – his left hand – was absolutely lifeless.  White knuckles stood bleached under skin already showing faintly blue.  But his right hand...

Clamped desperately under his left armpit, it had absorbed a little of the warmth still radiated by his chest.  Enough to keep the fingers responsive, though stiff and painful to move.

_‘Tis enough. ‘Twill serve...._

It was doubtful whether Trip would have noticed the movement, but all the same he kept it as smooth and silent as his failing co-ordination would allow.

Old habits died hard.  In one of the pockets of his coverall, lying snugly at the bottom, was a tiny, slender knife.  Made entirely of ivory, like the sheath that snugly encased it, it evaded scanners set to detect metal.  In the bad old days he’d worn it strapped to his thigh, under a pocket with a hole slit in it to allow him access in emergencies.

When he’d come to serve aboard _Enterprise_ his instinct had been to get rid of it – as he had done every other remnant of a past he wanted only to forget.  Nevertheless, there had been a number of occasions when having it to hand had saved his life, and what harm could it do?  It wasn’t as though it was traceable, like a projectile, or overtly threatening like an energy weapon.  It was just a small knife, handy for peeling fruit or gutting fish or stripping a piece of wire.  Nobody but he knew the other uses to which it had been put.

In another life, opening the zip would have been an action accomplished without thought.  In this one, it required an effort of will for every tiny mechanism involved in manipulating half-frozen digits burned by the cold of the zip tag.

He managed it somehow.  His hand slid clumsily into the pocket.  Yes, the knife was still there.  A slow movement of a thumbnail released the safety catch of the sheath, and the weapon inside slipped free.  Even the hilt was painfully cold against his skin, but the familiar feel of it was at once a reassurance and a horror.

The world was unreal as he straightened up again, the knife invisible under his blanket.  Trip’s eyes were closed.  Although his face was far from relaxed, his whole consciousness was probably drawn inward.  With any luck, he was somewhere far from this tiny freezing hell somewhere in the wasteland of space....

Malcolm knew exactly where to strike.  He’d done it so often he could have killed his companion in the dark.  His mind had already consented; his body still answered to his will.

Nevertheless, he hesitated, staring into the abyss.

It was the right thing to do.  Once Trip was gone, he himself would follow.  He wasn’t sure of his ability to carry out the same strike on himself, but there should be enough capacity left in his femoral arteries even now to bleed out quickly enough.  At these temperatures, the arteries in his wrists would probably be too badly constricted.

It wasn’t that he doubted the rightness of the action.  It was the act of a friend, the last kindness he could do to the man for whom he’d grown – however reluctantly – to care.  The answer was far simpler and more absurd than that.

After all these years, he simply couldn’t make himself do it.

Jag could have done it, and smiled.  But he couldn’t – he just couldn’t – have his best friend’s life ended by that monster in human form.

A few more minutes crept past.  Then Trip let out a soft, shuddering groan of misery.

The sound cut straight to Malcolm’s heart, and by some miracle of biology travelled straight to the muscles in his arm.  Before he could consciously realise what he was doing, he slewed sideways and thrust the blade into Trip Tucker’s neck, right under the angle of the jaw where the carotid artery was still beating frantically, trying to stave off the inevitable.

The cold betrayed him.  Normally the thrust would have been fast, straight and sure, severing the artery with the practised ease of a butcher.  Now, however, his stiff, weakened arm muscles reacted too slowly, and his fingers slipped on the haft, no longer strong enough to hold it steady.  Not only did Trip see the movement in time to react, he was able to jerk his head away.

Not enough. Not enough to stop the blade piercing deep, fatally deep, but enough to prevent the clean cut that would have opened the artery like a tap.  Instead, it was only nicked.  Blood spurted, gouts of it steaming in the cold, but it wasn’t a killing stroke.  Not immediately.

Trip hadn’t enough breath left to scream.  He made a thin, awful noise of terror, his blue eyes wide with horror and shock, his arms flailing.  One hand knocked the blade from Malcolm’s nerveless fingers, the other tried vainly to staunch the bleeding.  Scarlet poured between his fingers.

Pure adrenaline took over, blanking even the utter horror of having botched the most important kill of his life.  From somewhere his body summoned the strength and the will to move, falling to the icy deck plating to retrieve the knife.  The cold of the metal blistered the skin of his other palm, but he didn’t feel it; he was too busy trying to get his shaking fingers around the haft again.  Trip’s boots landed on his ribs; the man was kicking out at him, too spent and crazed to aim properly but trying to fend off his murderer from coming back to finish the job.

But the job _had_ to be finished.  Done properly, this time...

His own pulse hammering in his ears, Malcolm managed somehow to stagger back to his feet.  His last victim had fallen sideways.  The front of his uniform was already black with blood but he was still alive, still weakly trying to kick or paw him away.  Trying to fend off the Angel of Death.

Trip’s face was contorted with pain and fear.  He was probably beyond speech already, but his eyes were pools of shocked accusation:  _Malcolm, why?_

“I’m so sorry, Trip,” he whispered, and let himself fall forward.


	2. Reed

It was a long time before he moved again.  The effort of putting his superior officer out of his suffering had just about finished what little strength he had left.

There was no more oxygen than there had been, but it was all his now.  There was enough to let him do what needed to be done, and then it would all be over.  If he could have reached the helm controls he’d have recorded his last confession, but he knew that was beyond him.  When _Enterprise_ finally arrived – too late to save – they’d just have to draw their own conclusions.

If he’d been able to think about it at all, he’d have imagined the pain in his heart would have been enough to kill him.  Certainly something inside him that was quite separate from the frantically beating pump beneath his ribs was squeezing inwards, crushing him until water seeped on to his eyelashes, where despite being salt it instantly began to crystallise.

_He’s dead.  No use crying about it now. You’re a murderer._

Slowly, absurdly, he wiped the knife on his blanket.  The blood on it was already solidifying in the freezing air.

_You’re a murderer._

Was it right for him to take the easy way out?  Didn’t he deserve to suffer for what he’d done?  He didn’t believe in Heaven or Hell, but he believed in justice.  Maybe the slow way out would be some ... some repayment for his crime; for whatever the motive, murder was a crime, and murder of one’s senior officer was one of the blackest sins an officer in any service could commit.

He glanced at the phase pistol, lying useless now on the deck plating.  Shortly after coming to the conclusion that it would no longer be required to coerce Trip away from the airlock he’d used it to heat up portions of the hull behind the bench where they huddled, but the energy required to make even a tiny change to the temperature had soon drained the power cell.  It was not designed for prolonged use, only for short bursts.  If there had been any power left in it he’d have used it on Trip, but fate had never been that merciful.

But even if he was a murderer and a criminal, he still had a responsibility to Starfleet.  There was still a possibility that if he allowed himself to become helpless, some hostile entity might come across the shuttlepod before _Enterprise_ arrived.  He might be taken prisoner and revived, and somehow forced to reveal his technical knowledge, even despite his training in resisting interrogation; the ‘pod’s technological secrets might be plundered. 

The former, at least, he could and would prevent.  

He could only hope that any species sophisticated enough to be out here in deep space would find little of interest in the shuttlepod.  His own extensive knowledge, on the other hand, could be deeply damaging in hands hostile to Starfleet.

Drawing a shallow, shuddering breath, he shucked the blanket off and let himself slump back down against the bench, spreading his numb legs with a huge effort.  The cold of the metal underneath him burned his skin through the fabric of his uniform, but he ignored it.

The edges of the blade were serrated, wickedly sharp.  More than good enough to do what was necessary.

With difficulty, he turned his head just once to look at the comm unit.  _So many regrets_.  But not for much longer.

One strike should do it.  If he could manage through what he knew would be a sickening wave of pain, he’d make a second cut, just to make sure.  After that – well, unless he managed to botch this job too, he reckoned he had about a minute of life left.

He tipped his head back, wishing he believed in anything after death.  But maybe it was for the best anyway.  If there had been an afterlife, what was waiting for him certainly wouldn’t have involved harps and halos.

There had been a time when he hadn’t given a damn whether he lived or died; when ‘Grim Reaper’ wouldn’t have been all that inaccurate a description.  By the bitterest of ironies, _Enterprise_ had changed all that.  _The ship giveth, and the ship taketh away_.  Now he knew that life was sweet, that it was something of incalculable value.  He’d learned to love it only when it was so nearly over, and he hadn’t even known.

The haft was icy in his weakening grasp, and slippery with blood.  Trip's blood.

_“I’m sorry,”_ he whispered, and raised the knife.


	3. Sato

“Shuttlepod secured, sir,” said Ensign de la Haye, looking up eagerly from the weapons console she was manning in her boss’s absence.

Like everyone else on the Bridge, for the last couple of minutes Hoshi had been watching events on the main viewer that were transmitted through one of the dorsal cameras.   As the ship closed on the shuttlepod over the last few hours she’d remained at her post, constantly transmitting calls that weren’t answered.  The inexplicable silence had laid a blanket of anxiety over the Bridge ever since the ‘pod had failed to make its scheduled contact or to respond to hails afterwards.  The blanket had deepened to fear when T’Pol informed the captain that the long-range sensors had detected an explosion on or close to the small craft; it was too far away to determine which, but the alarm was enough to make the captain order an immediate increase in speed.

The man who could have nursed an extra touch of power out of the straining engines was aboard that distant shuttlepod.  Anna Hess had done her best, but she didn’t have his instinctive genius.  Every now and then they’d had to throttle back just a little to let the relays somewhere cool down.

The days were long gone when a quiver in the deck plating had Hoshi jumping with apprehension.  Now each tremor underfoot meant only more delay, more time before the ship could reach the two stranded officers.

It had felt like days before the long-range cameras were finally able to detect the shuttlepod.  Looking strangely stunted without the engines attached to its stern – it was now clear what had exploded – it was plowing through space on nothing more than its own momentum, rocking languidly in a way that suggested nobody was at the helm.

“Bring it on board,” the captain ordered, rising from his chair.  “Hoshi, get Phlox to meet me in the launch bay. T’Pol, you’ve got the com.”

He vanished into the turbo-lift.  With her usual grace, T’Pol rose from her seat at the Science station and moved to the captain’s chair, where she sat down and ordered the transfer of the video feed to the camera inside the launch bay as soon as the shuttlepod was on board.

With what felt like agonizing slowness, the docking clamp pulled the small craft in through the bay doors.  Although Hoshi knew that Eloise de la Haye was every bit as anxious as anyone else aboard to retrieve the ‘pod safely and find out what had happened to it, she had to restrain herself almost physically from leaping across the Bridge and screaming at the Armory ensign to hurry it up.  That silence, that absolute silence, was tearing at her ears.

Nothing could be wrong.  It was an equipment malfunction, that was all.  The atmosphere inside the ‘pod couldn’t possibly be as cold and toxic as the ship’s sensors suggested….

She switched the camera feed as soon as the docking clamp rose through the bay doors, the shuttlepod safely in its grip.  Even Eloise must have miscalculated slightly in her anxiety, for one of the little vessel’s fins scraped the edge of the recently-repaired bay just fractionally, but no harm was done; it was safe and sound, no sign of burning or hull damage, and the instant the doors closed the camera picked up the hum of the compressed air being re-released back into the now sealed compartment.

Sophisticated safety systems prevented the inner doors from being opened before the bay was fully pressurized again.  Doubtless by now Phlox and Captain Archer were in the control area, waiting impatiently for the indicator light to change from red to green.

The endless seconds crept past.  Then, at last, the door to the control area hissed open.

The captain put his hands on to the stair-rails to the lower floor and, bracing his weight on his arms, lifted his feet and slid down.  The doctor, though less athletic, followed him down in haste.

By the time Phlox arrived beside the shuttlepod, Captain Archer was already hastily keying in the command to open the door in its side.  Moisture in the ship’s atmosphere was condensing on the ‘pod’s sides, forming a glittering layer of frost.

The camera angle allowed a partial sight of the viewscreen.  The seats inside it were empty. There had, indeed, been nobody piloting it as _Enterprise_ approached.

Across at Tactical, Eloise de la Haye was studying the scanner readouts that must be available to her.  She said nothing.  Her face was the color of chalk.

The servomotors in the shuttle door seemed to be jammed.  The captain opened a panel near the back of the hull and did something inside it, pulling his fingers away every so often and shaking them as though the surfaces he was touching were burning him.  Phlox was trying to peer through the viewscreen, his expression agitated; he kept looking at the scanner he was holding.

There was no-one at the Science station.  T’Pol was silent, watching the screen.  Hoshi could have brought up the readings on her console, but her fingers rested beside the buttons, motionless.  It was better not to know, better never to ask.  Better to stay on the hither side of the discovery that was about to be made, better to hold on to the moments when it was still possible to believe that that silence was simply because a comm unit had fused….

The servomotors engaged.  The door lifted.  Both the captain and the doctor darted under the opening wing.  They both started coughing as they entered the semi-darkness within.

Almost instantly the silence exploded.  Captain Archer’s voice was shouting _Trip, Trip_ and Phlox was shouting into the comm unit for a crash team and a blood transfusion unit.

T’Pol stood up.  Her face was so impassive that Hoshi could have shrieked.  “T’Pol to Captain Archer,” she said clearly.  “Please advise the situation.”

There was no answer.  The camera’s microphone picked up a jumble of sound and a man’s scream.

At the helm, in front of her, Travis sat frozen, his face a mask of horror as he stared at the screen.  At Tactical, Eloise’s hand crept up to cup her cheek, an oddly childlike gesture.  One of the crewmen carrying out routine checks in the Situation Room dropped a PADD, and the noise of the clatter resounded through the deathly silence of the Bridge.

T’Pol waited.

The crash team arrived, with a gurney and the transfusion equipment.  A bag of O-Negative blood was already standing by on a stand, and the team hurried it into the shuttlepod.  There was the sound of more coughing, and somebody vomited.

Hoshi stared at her console.

Every week Trip ran Movie Night.  Two weeks ago the film had been a dreadful old science fiction thing where right at the end the heroine had found herself trapped in an escape pod with a deadly alien.  Trip had laughed his head off, and even Malcolm had snorted around a mouthful of popcorn.

There was movement in the shuttlepod doorway.

It was Captain Archer, his movements suddenly slow and uncertain.  He put a groping hand blindly on the side of the hatchway, and when he snatched his fingers away again there were dark marks solidifying into the white frost.

He stumbled as he dropped to the deck plating.  The camera watched him almost reel to the comm unit on the wall. 

“T’Pol,” he said, his voice cracking.  “There’s been – there’s been some kind of–”  He looked away, looked around the launch bay as though searching in vain for some way to describe what had happened in the small craft behind him.  Finally he looked at the camera and found the only words that mattered.

“Trip’s dead.”


	4. Archer

The ship’s running lights were lowered, simulating night time; it had been established long since that even humans who worked in shifts, as those on starships did perforce, benefited from clearly defined ‘night and day’.

It followed that even though many posts were still occupied and routine work had to be carried out, the off-duty crew tended to keep the noise down during the so-called ‘hours of darkness’.

But never, in all his life, had the hours seemed so dark to Jonathan Archer, and never since coming on board ship had the shadows in the corridors seemed to have a hidden life of their own.  Even on the dark day his father had finally lost his long battle with Clarke’s Disease he’d never felt such all-consuming loss.  Maybe because that was because the last two years of Henry Archer’s life had been a misery of pain and mental deterioration, and death had come as a merciful release.  Maybe because his father’s death had brought with it no unbearable burden of guilt, no stunning disbelief, no rending shock.  Maybe because his father hadn’t been…..

The prospect of eating had been unthinkable.  He wasn’t hungry.  He still wasn’t.   He fed Porthos now because that was what he did in the evenings, not because he realized the dog needed food.  He didn’t see the little beagle’s anxious expression or drooping tail.  He responded to the insistently thrusting head beneath his hand because that was what he did in that situation.  For no other reason at all.

He hadn’t notified Starfleet yet.  He couldn’t imagine himself forming the words.  And Maxwell would want information beyond the bare facts: reasons, explanations … things beyond his power to conjure up.  The bare facts were more than he could cope with right now.

And after Starfleet… Trip’s parents.  Charles and Ellen.

How the hell was he supposed to tell them?  What the hell was he supposed to _say?_ What should he reveal, what should he withhold, how much did they actually need to know about the scene he’d stumbled into when that damned shuttlepod door finally opened?

He didn’t know that his thumb had pressed the comm button until Phlox answered.

“No change, Captain.  I will inform you immediately of any developments.”

The doc sounded dead tired.  Hardly surprising.  Over five hours in surgery, and it still hung in the balance whether all that effort had been for anything.

He closed the channel without saying anything.  Probably the Denobulan would understand; the whole ship was in a state of shock.  People were tiptoeing around the corridors as though a careless footfall would set the whole superstructure crumbling.  Crewmembers who passed him cast him surreptitious, pleading glances as though he must have some kind of explanation for what had happened, as though if he wanted to he could just wave a magic wand that would make it all perfectly rational and reasonable for Trip to be….

He swallowed.  _For Trip to be dead._

Suddenly his quarters seemed too confining.  He pressed Porthos away, gently but firmly, and walked to the door.

How often had Trip come lounging through it, a couple of beers dangling carelessly from one hand, to discuss the day’s doings or the next day’s plans?  Or sometimes just to reminisce about the old days, to have a laugh over the long months of suspense during the ship’s fitting out, while the Vulcans bellyached over Humanity’s readiness for the dangers inherent in deep space travel and he and AG vied with each other over who would finally be chosen to sit in the Big Chair of Earth’s first Warp 5 capable starship.

He stepped out into the corridor.  Out of habit he almost turned towards the Mess-hall, but turned aside sharply; tonight he couldn’t bear to see what he knew he would, the faces drawn with shock and grief, and hear whispered conversations suddenly muted when the whisperers realized he was there.  Whispers on one topic, one topic only, the same one that reverberated around the ship:

_What the hell happened?_

The medics wouldn’t talk.  He’d had enough wits left to order them to say nothing to anyone till he gave them permission, not to talk even between themselves about what they’d seen.  He hoped that would be enough, hoped they’d be able to restrain themselves from feeding one or two tidbits into the starving rumor mill.  Human nature being what it is, the temptation would be there.  But the ramifications of such an event as this would be enormous.  As soon as Admiral Forrest was notified, there was only one order he could give: return to Earth for a tribunal to be convened.  And witnesses into what could potentially turn into a criminal investigation are not supposed to discuss what they’ve seen or heard or thought, for fear of corrupting their testimony.

A _criminal investigation._ The words almost made his head swim when he imagined them applied to one of his most trusted officers.  But then nothing in his world had made sense ever since he’d stepped up into that shuttlepod.

He walked without will, without a conscious destination, perhaps trying to outpace the memories that were printed on his mind.  He was tired – no, he was _exhausted_ – but sleep was further from him than it had ever been.  The last thing he wanted to do right now was to lie down, turn the light off and shut his eyes.

He hesitated beside T’Pol’s door.  For all that his XO had taken the news with Vulcan stoicism, he suspected she wasn’t quite as unmoved as she’d tried to project.  Sure, she’d shown Trip nothing but supercilious disdain – and outright bad manners – that day they were first introduced, but since then the inevitable and frequent interaction between the two of them during the course of the ship’s working day had seen a small but noticeable sea change.  They still bickered occasionally, and Trip wasn’t – _hadn’t been_ – above poking gentle fun at her behind her back, but somehow the ill-will had gone out of it, to be replaced by something perilously approaching affection, on his part at least.  Quite how she’d felt was more of a problem to determine, but certainly she’d begun to respond to his increasingly teasing manner with less asperity and more tolerance. 

Had she been Human, Jonathan would probably have pressed the chime and gone in to ask if she was okay.  As it was, he suspected she was probably meditating, and that was probably the best healing she was likely to find right now.

Unable to sleep, unable to stop, he walked on around the darkened ship, an uneasy, restless ghost haunting the all-but-empty corridors.

Hoshi had been so distraught he’d asked Crewman Cutler to give her a shot to help her sleep.  At a guess, there would be more than a few calls on Sickbay’s resources, though he passed the gymnasium and caught sight of Travis in there, pumping iron with a single-mindedness that suggested he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, let alone sleep.

He didn’t know he was going to Sickbay until the doors hissed shut behind him and Phlox turned from the laboratory table with a look of inquiry.

He didn’t want to turn and look at the single occupied bed in the curtained-off Intensive Care area, but his feet turned him anyway, and carried him to the side of it, where they stopped.

Phlox accompanied him.  He wasn’t quite sure why.  Maybe it was just in case.

Reed was unconscious, deeply sedated after major surgery.  He was hooked up to a saline drip and yet another bag of blood – presumably his system still needed some topping up.  He lay completely still, his eyelashes motionless on his colorless cheeks.  A couple of days’ stubble showed black along his jaw, lending him an absurdly piratical appearance at odds with his usual impeccably clean-shaven look.

There was something lying on top of the night-stand beside him, something that looked out of place among the rest of the medical paraphernalia there.  It was protected in a sealed plastic bag, but Phlox had been well aware of the requirements regarding evidence from a crime scene: it was still smeared with blood.

Silently Jonathan picked up the bag, handling it by the top end to keep any additional pressure away from the weapon within, and held it up to look at it more closely.

It was definitely not Starfleet issue.  Made of some kind of bone, slender and sharp, with a serrated blade and a hilt that had been carved with a criss-cross pattern, presumably to provide grip.

The knife that had….

Vomit rushed up in his throat.  He spun around and raced towards the bathroom but couldn’t get there in time.  His stomach was empty, but bile splattered on the floor as he retched and heaved, leaning on a handy trolley.

Phlox helped him up on to the nearest bio-bed.  “Captain, you need to rest,” he said kindly, fetching him a handful of paper towels and some water to rinse his mouth.

Jonathan rinsed and spat into the bowl the doctor was holding for him.  “I _need_ to find out what happened in that shuttlepod,” he replied grimly.

The Denobulan sighed.  “Captain, there is no guarantee that Mister Reed will survive till morning.  Unless he does, and unless we find some account in the shuttlepod’s logs, you may have to accept that we never _will_ know exactly what happened.”

The captain stared back at that occupied bed, and the still figure lying in it.  At the man who might not survive the night, and who was the only one who could provide answers to the questions that were robbing him of sleep.

He’d given himself till tomorrow before he faced the ordeal of listening to the shuttle logs.  He dreaded what he might have to listen to.  But the initial examination of them had suggested that the last recording had been made some while before… before….

Grief surged in him again.  He was experiencing these emotions in waves, washing over him and sending him tumbling out of control before they eventually ebbed again, leaving him stranded on the wasteland of his loss.  He’d sent Trip out in that shuttlepod, thinking almost nothing of it.  It was just a routine test, trialing Shuttlepod One’s targeting scanners; the sort of thing that just had to be done every now and then, and he hadn’t dreamed this time would be any different.  But then, he hadn’t expected the collision with the Tesnian ship either.  One minute it was an ordinary First Contact (with pleasant-seeming aliens for once), and the next thing anyone knew, the vessel that had been maneuvering to dock with _Enterprise_ had suddenly yawed, rolled and delivered an almighty smack to the underside of the Earth vessel that had torn her launch bay door off.

It certainly hadn’t been a deliberate attack, and only the almost immediate launch of lifeboats from the stricken Tesnian ship had saved a huge loss of life as it plowed into a nearby asteroid and disintegrated.  The next few hours had been fully occupied with their new and unexpected passengers, shocked and distressed and apologetic, followed by the inevitable, unscheduled trip to Tesnia to take them home.  All of that time he’d barely spared a thought for the two men in the shuttlepod, except for reassuring himself that none of this was any problem, because even with the extra journey _Enterprise_ would be back at the scheduled rendezvous point long before the shuttlepod could be expected there.

As soon as the Tesnians were restored to their home planet, he’d ordered the ship to get under way again, not even waiting for the fulsome thanks of the Tesnian government.  It wasn’t as if he’d suspected anything, even then, but Space (as the Vulcans had never tired of pointing out) was a dangerous place.  Sure, it wasn’t as though the two officers out there were inexperienced; he had every confidence in their ability to handle a tough situation with professional competence.  Maybe it was just the demonstration of how suddenly and completely a seemingly ordinary situation could turn into a potential catastrophe that had unsettled him.

Still, there hadn’t seemed any particular reason to hurry.  After all, there wasn’t going to be anything out of the ordinary for the ship to do in the asteroid field if they arrived early, except hang around while his stellar cartography people did some more of their stuff and listen to T’Pol remarking that Vulcans didn’t find asteroids interesting.

It had only been thanks to his XO’s vigilance, however, that that far distant explosion had not gone unnoticed.  Now, it was plain that for some reason the ‘pod’s engines had been detached before the detonation took place. (Had they developed a fault, or been blown up deliberately?  With any luck, the shuttle logs would reveal that at least.)  Although it had been impossible to identify exactly what had happened, the fear that his officers could be in danger had been strong enough to order the captain to ‘put the pedal to the metal’ as the old saying had it.

Hard, but not hard enough.  Fast, but not fast enough.  Soon, but not soon enough.

The ‘pod had been intact.  His relief at that discovery had been premature.

He’d entered it to find his old buddy, his Chief Engineer, lying dead across a bench, his throat opened like that of a slaughtered deer.

In front of him, half-sprawled in a pool of frozen scarlet on the floor, frenziedly jabbing something into his own blood-covered thighs, was his Tactical Officer.

Malcolm Reed.

_Murderer._


	5. Mayweather

Travis stepped out of the shower, wrapped himself in a towel and sank down onto a nearby bench.

He was always enthusiastic in his workouts, but tonight he’d excelled himself.  He’d worked till the muscles in his arms and legs felt like wet rags, burning with lactic acid.  Stupid, because even as he’d heaved at the weights he’d known that the oblivion he craved would not be found when he lay down to sleep, no matter how hard he worked.

He dried himself slowly.  He’d eaten and drunk, though not much of either, but he wasn’t hungry.  He had a letter to finish, but he couldn’t imagine himself writing anything now; only one topic filled his thoughts, but he could imagine that it was one that certainly shouldn’t be put ‘out there’ before any official statement was made.  Few people knew better than he how fast gossip could travel, and there was sure going to be talk about what had happened today.

Whatever _had_ happened.  The captain still hadn’t made any official announcement except for a terse statement that Commander Tucker had lost his life in the course of his duties and an investigation was under way.  His appearances on the Bridge after that had been brief and sporadic, and the extraordinary tension of the situation had made everyone – Travis included – careful to keep their behavior absolutely professional.  He’d snatched only the briefest and wariest of glances at his CO, but those had been enough to show him the lines of strain and grief carved in the man’s face.

So Trip was dead.  Incredible and appalling as that fact might be, at least it was a fact.  But there had been two men in the shuttlepod, and so far the only name that had been mentioned had been that of a dead man.

_What about Malcolm?_

In the months during which he’d served aboard _Enterprise_ , Travis had grown to feel both respect and liking for the ship’s Armory Officer.  Sure, he wasn’t the easiest guy to get to know, and he could be stiff and awkward at times, but he knew his job and was liked and respected by the men and women who worked for him.  He was clever, hard-working and scrupulously fair.  He also – Travis suspected, from years of people-watching – had the start of ‘a thing’ about Hoshi, who steadfastly refused to believe it when he sometimes teased her about it in the Mess Hall.  Still, it was one of those superficially unlikely pairings that occasionally work out surprisingly well, and he’d been getting the impression that despite her disclaimers, Hoshi herself wasn’t completely averse to the idea of her shy admirer.

The news of Trip’s death had been shattering to everyone;  it was hardly surprising that Hoshi had needed a sedative to let her sleep, and at a guess a few of his own team would be in a bad state too.  Travis was trying to hold off from that option, which was why he’d spent the evening in the gym, but it wasn’t working.  Though his grief for Trip was deep and heartfelt, for the engineer had been brilliant, friendly and impossible not to like, he felt that he and the tactical officer had been on the way to achieving a quiet sort of friendship as well as a good working relationship.  And the question still hammered at him, the absolute absence of one man’s name screamed in the silence.

_What about Malcolm?_

He had to get some idea.  Even if he couldn’t… if he couldn’t find out what had happened, at least he could find out where the man actually was.

There was no answer to the chime when he finally made his reluctant way to the lieutenant’s quarters.  He tried a couple of times, and called out, but there was no response. At last he resorted to using a scanner to find out if there was anyone inside, but the room was empty.

The absence of a guard posted outside the Brig allowed himself to draw a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding.  He still looked inside, just in case, but the two cells were empty and silent.

That left the one place he hadn’t really wanted to go.

He hesitated for a long moment before pressing the control button for the Sickbay doors.  Even the swish as they opened sounded different, menacing.

Phlox was seated beside his laboratory bench, but at the arrival of a prospective patient he looked up, visibly summoning a smile.  “Ah, Mister Mayweather!  What may I do for you?”

Travis hadn’t gotten as far as conjuring up a fictitious headache but now wished he had; it would have given him an excuse to be here.  He knew perfectly well that Phlox would already have realized there was nothing wrong with him at all – well, nothing physical, at any rate.

He must have looked so tongue-tied and miserable that the doc’s smile faded away, to be replaced by compassionate understanding.  “Ah – are you here on behalf of someone else?”

The normal beds in Sickbay were empty, but the thin curtains that separated the I C Unit from the main area were drawn.  Through it, Travis could see that one of the beds in there was occupied.  The glow of monitors touched the shaft of an IV stand, dimly visible in the low light, and provided enough illumination to show that the sleeper had short dark hair, no more.

“Yes, that is Lieutenant Reed.”  Phlox answered the unspoken question gently.  “He is currently under sedation after surgery for several serious injuries.”

Travis caught his breath.  “He – he will be okay, won’t he?”

The Denobulan smiled sadly.  “I hope he will survive, but at present that is far from definite.”  He held up a hand.  “Ensign, you should understand that I am under strict orders from the captain not to discuss Mister Reed with any member of the crew.  I have already said probably more than I ought, but I know the regard in which he has always been held by his fellow officers.”

The helmsman’s startled gaze went back to the half-seen figure in the ICU bed.  The sense that something was appallingly wrong had deepened.  Since when had Captain Archer forbidden members of his crew from asking about their sick comrades?  Naturally the doctor couldn’t discuss any details of a patient’s medical condition, but this sounded far more absolute a veto: as though Malcolm were to be treated as though he didn’t even _exist_ anymore.

Persisting would risk getting Phlox into trouble.  With a mumbled ‘Thanks, Doc’, Travis left Sickbay, casting a last troubled glance behind him at the little that could be seen of the ship’s unconscious tactical officer.

He trudged back to his quarters, his mind churning.  ‘Serious injuries’ suggested that whatever had … had killed Trip, had had a try at killing Malcolm too.  It maybe wasn’t so surprising that the man with far more expertise in self-defense had been the one who’d survived some murderous assault, but why was the captain behaving as though Malcolm was the attacker rather than the victim?  Had it been something the Englishman had caused?

Maybe something had gone wrong inside the shuttlepod, maybe some catastrophic equipment malfunction that had been Malcolm’s fault.  It was virtually impossible to imagine Trip causing something that serious to go wrong.  That said, it was pretty damn difficult to imagine Malcolm making a mistake of that magnitude – but the bottom line was, he wasn’t the Chief Engineer.

That would definitely account for the captain being in a rage.  But if it had just been a tragic mistake, would he have been _this_ vindictive?  Wouldn’t he understand, even now, that Malcolm would blame himself for the tragedy more than anyone else could do?  Couldn’t he find enough pity for the man to even let people ask about him?

His thoughts were so far removed from his surroundings that as he turned a corner he very nearly cannoned into the very man he’d been thinking of with such bewilderment.  The captain put out a hand to steady him kindly enough.  “You okay, Travis?”

“Sir.”  He pulled his scattered senses together.  He blinked at his Commanding Officer, and thought he’d never seen the other man’s face so rigid; the eyes in it were chips of green glass, warning him off from trespass.

A more highly-developed sense of self-preservation would have commanded him to hold his tongue, but loyalty won out.  “Sir, I … I’ve just been down to Sickbay, looking for Lieutenant Reed, and … Doctor Phlox just said you–”

“Access to Lieutenant Reed is forbidden to all personnel from now on.”  The captain cut in with the brutal precision of a surgeon.  “You’re not to speak to him, Ensign, and if by any chance he attempts to communicate with you, you refuse and then you inform me.  Is that clear?”

Travis gaped at him.  He simply couldn’t compute how their normally compassionate CO could have turned so utterly against one of his own Bridge Officers for a mistake, however tragic the outcome of it.  “Y-yes, sir,” he stammered.  “But–”

“Understand this, Ensign.” Archer’s voice was deadly cold.  “If Lieutenant Reed survives, he will face a criminal investigation before a military tribunal.  If convicted, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life in prison or in a secure unit.  That’s all you need to know right now.”

A _secure unit?_ A _criminal investigation?_ For _Malcolm_ , the most inflexibly upright man on the ship?

More and more, Travis felt like he’d strayed into a madhouse.  For sure he seemed to be the only sane guy on a ship full of lunatics.

Once again his emotions must have been clearly visible on his face, for the captain’s face softened slightly and he laid a hand on his junior officer’s shoulder in a way that was already one of his hallmarks.  “I can’t tell you more than that right now, Travis.  We have a lot of questions we don’t have answers for yet, and till we do it wouldn’t be fair to anybody for me to talk about what’s happened.”

The young helmsman swallowed, and straightened under the reassuring hand.  “I understand, sir.”  Though he didn’t, of course, but he understood that if something – something utterly _inexplicable –_ had happened and a criminal investigation was to take place, a whole lot of regulations now applied that would govern what should happen on the ship.  Obviously the captain didn’t have a lot of choice about that.

 _Does he want one?_ a treacherous little voice whispered in his head. 

He pushed it away.  Of course this was hurting the captain more than anyone else.  Trip had been his buddy, and Malcolm had been his choice as Tactical Officer for the ship.  He’d be hurting on both their accounts.  That was the sort of guy he was.

“Try and get some sleep,” Archer advised, releasing him with a final pat.  “Some time tomorrow we’ll probably have to set course for Earth, but for now we’ll be staying where we are… Just in case some further evidence turns up.”

“Just give me the word, sir.”  He tried to project confidence; the captain needed that, needed to know he could rely on the rest of his officers and crew.  Presumably it worked, for the other man nodded briefly and walked on.  Gazing after him, Travis received the overwhelming impression that he wasn’t walking _to_ anywhere, just … walking.

Well, he wasn’t getting anywhere just standing here.  Time was getting on, and he should be getting some shut-eye.  If he could conceivably manage to fall asleep – and that in itself was a heck of an ask right now.

He sighed, and went back to his cabin.  Where it took even longer than he’d expected before exhaustion finally claimed him.


	6. T'Pol

Self-discipline was one of the most valued traits in Vulcan society.

Long training in the V’Shar and the service of the Vulcan Embassy had honed that trait in T’Pol to a fine degree.  It had to be admitted (if only in the privacy of her own mind) that prolonged contact with Humans had eroded it somewhat. 

Many of their less ‘admirable’ characteristics had proved to be disconcertingly contagious.  For instance, over the last few months she had actually caught herself enjoying the cut and thrust of witty repartee with Commander Tucker.  Initially dismissing his presence as simply another burden to bear during her thankfully brief appointment aboard _Enterprise_ , she had slowly become aware that he was by no means the graceless oaf as which she had originally dismissed him; that he was intelligent, kind and playful, and that – though she had labored long against admitting it, even to herself – she was not nearly as immune to his charm as she would have preferred to be.

This last would have been exasperating, but for the fact that exasperation was an emotion to which Vulcans certainly _were_ – or ought to be – immune.  Nevertheless, it was what lent a more cutting edge than usual to her voice when said Commander’s attraction to the opposite sex soon caused the seemingly inevitable disruption to the smooth running of the ship.  The Vulcan database had discoursed at length upon Humans’ enslavement to their hormones, and Commander Charles Tucker III had appeared a prime example of it; the database had mentioned in particular the extreme difficulty the male of the species experienced in controlling their rampant sexual urges.

So emphatic – not to say graphic – had the account been that on accepting even so brief a posting aboard _Enterprise_ , among Human males forbidden to seek release for their raging needs with willing females, she had been half-expecting to be the constant target of frustrated lust in some form or other.  The respect she’d been universally accorded instead had been such a marked contrast that she had begun to suspect that the database’s compilers had been driven rather more by overheated imaginations than by the results of actual scientific study; though if she were ever to present _that_ particular theory to the High Command, it would be as well to find some more tactful way of phrasing it.

Subsequent discoveries, however, had cleared the Commander of anything worse than a certain naïveté when it came to playing ‘harmless’ games with aliens and boxes of pebbles.  Innate honesty forced her to admit that given the limitations of his experience of Human sexuality, he could not fairly have been expected to suspect that a game presented to him as nothing more than some childish form of telepathic contact might in actual fact be far more significant than that.  Conceding that according to his species’ codes of behavior he had – exactly as he had claimed – ‘behaved like a perfect gentleman’, she had secretly transferred her disgusted wrath to the Xyrillian engineer Ah’len, who certainly _had_ known that that ‘game’ with the box of pebbles was far from the innocent entertainment as which she had presented it.

So he had continued to warm and charm her, slowly metamorphosing into her favorite sparring partner on board ship.  If it dawned on her occasionally that she was beginning to regard him as more than simply a colleague, she reminded herself that even Vulcans had friends.  If sometimes it seemed that his attractiveness went further than just his conversation or his intelligence, she told herself that even Vulcans valued aesthetic appeal.  If once or twice she caught herself appreciating the scent of the sandalwood after-shave he used, well, Vulcans were not forbidden from finding some scents more intrinsically pleasing than others.

And now he was dead.

The captain’s announcement had come as a heart-stopping shock.  Fortunately she was disciplined enough to hide it beneath a veneer of calm, as befitted a senior officer; the ship’s personnel needed leadership now more than ever.  She had continued to command the Bridge while the captain did what needed to be done in the launch bay and elsewhere.  But beneath that veneer, grief of a truly shocking intensity had raged.  It had taken hours of meditation before she was able to regain her proper Vulcan stoicism, and finally sleep.

Now, the realization of her loss lay between her and the world like a deadening fog, muting colors and sounds.  It would have been illogical to forego breaking her fast, but the _plomeek_ broth tasted of nothing.

Conversation in the Mess-hall at this hour, normally lively, was at a quarter of its usual volume.  At one of the tables near the right-hand viewing port, Ensign Mayweather sat dully stirring a spoon in a bowl of cereal without attempting to eat any, while opposite him Ensign Sato’s valiant attempts to eat a few slices of peeled apple came to nothing.

The captain was eating alone in his private Mess.  At a guess, his plate would go back to the steward with its contents barely touched. 

She was beginning to be familiar with the Human manifestations of grief.

Professionalism, however, naturally required that even so strong an emotion be kept in its proper place.  She approved the fact that the Alpha bridge crew arrived promptly at their stations, and that female members of the crew had made discreet attempts to cover up the signs of private mourning.  Nevertheless it was noticeable that today there was no sparkle of anticipation – even Ensign Mayweather’s strained and dutiful smile vanished the instant it was no longer required.  Ensign de la Haye sat at Tactical with a face that seemed to have aged twenty years overnight, but her surveillance over the long-range scanners and weapons readiness readouts was impeccable.

The captain arrived just as the chronometer on the Science station turned to the hour.  He emerged from the turbo-lift with long, steady strides, but sorrow, exhaustion and strain were chiseled into his features. He paused only to receive the standard ‘Nothing to report, sir’ from each of his Bridge officers before summoning her with a jerk of the head to his Ready Room.

Although not normally unwilling to open even an awkward conversation, T’Pol hesitated as he pointed her to a chair that had been brought in and set ready. To ask  ‘How are you feeling’ when one of his closest friends had been killed verged on the insensate; Lieutenant Reed was presumably still alive, but to inquire after his exact condition might be misconstrued as sympathy for the apparent murderer of a senior officer.

_Apparent_ , she reminded herself sternly.  ‘Accused’ and ‘convicted’ were two completely different things, however damning the evidence might appear.  Until or unless incontrovertible proof or a free, full and unquestionable confession should be produced, and the man convicted by due process in a court of law, the lieutenant was legally innocent of any crime.

“I offer my sympathies for your loss, Captain,” she said at last, softly.

He’d been sorting through the data-chips retrieved from the shuttlepod but at that he paused, his mouth flinching.  After a moment, however, he controlled it and went on with his task.

“Trip would have wanted justice, not sympathy,” he answered finally, his voice hard, as he slotted one of the discs into his computer.

“Then we must ensure that justice is done.”  She put just enough emphasis on the noun to earn her a glance that was as hard as his tone had been, but she returned it steadily.  Like most of his species Jonathan Archer was very much a prey to his emotions, and right now, without a doubt, he was driven by grief to wanting quick answers.  Accurate answers, no doubt, but speed and accuracy are sometimes incompatible.  She would have to be on her guard to ensure that the quick answers _were_ the accurate ones, or something very different to justice would be done.

He rapidly reviewed the list of recordings, his face hardening still further.  All of the ones that post-dated the time of the last communication received from the shuttle had been recorded by Lieutenant Reed.  There were quite a number.

Clearly schooling his expression to impassivity with an effort, he selected the first and gave the command to the computer to play the recording.

The English voice was unmistakable, but there was a note in it that was very unlike his normal crisp tones.  He sounded as though he had been fighting back tears, and now and again a tremor crept in, causing him to swallow audibly.  “‘Personal log, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, November 9, 2151…’”

Captain and executive officer listened in silence as the halting recital went on.  The content, however, was mystifying until the low voice finally said, “‘We found the ship destroyed, its debris strewn across a square kilometre of one of the larger asteroids.’” 

Archer ordered the computer to pause playback, and stared at her, wide-eyed.  “The Tesnian ship – they thought it was _Enterprise_?”

“It would appear so.” For all her Vulcan poise, she was shaken.  Certainly there had been debris – the remains of the unfortunate Tesnian transport; but what would have led the two men to believe it was that of their own ship?

“The launch bay door.”  He spoke with the soft certainty of despair.  “They must have seen the registry number – or at least part of it.”

“And their scanners were inoperative.”  There would have been no way of analyzing the metals of which the debris was composed, to realize that only a tiny part of it was the alloy of which _Enterprise_ ’s hull was made.

The pieces of the mystery began their heavy fall into place.  After a little silence the captain ordered the computer to resume playback.

“‘Had our sensors been working we would certainly have done everything possible to discover the cause of the disaster, but with only a short-range distress beacon and limited air, we had no choice but to set a course for Echo Three, where someday this vessel, and this log, will be found.  May God have mercy on our souls.’”

Privately T’Pol suspected that Lieutenant Reed was not a particularly religious man.  This last sentence, although spoken with feeling, seemed more to be in keeping with what would be expected of a solemn account of a doomed vessel’s last hours.  Certainly it indicated that the lieutenant had held out no hope at all of rescue, and given the situation that they had supposedly been in, his view had been entirely logical.

After that, he had begun recording messages of a more personal nature.  The captain skimmed through these, his brow dark, until he reached the last one – but this unexpectedly provided a sudden and startling illumination of the state of affairs in the shuttlepod.

It began as a relatively normal farewell message to Lieutenant Reed’s parents.  Part way through it, however, there was an irate interruption from Commander Tucker in the background, complaining that he had been dictating for hours and suggesting it was time he ‘give it a rest’.

The sound analysis that had been running in the background of the recording had suggested on several earlier occasions that recording had been paused, backtracked and re-started, suggesting that the process had not been uninterrupted.  This time, however, Reed had made no attempt to re-record over the commander’s interjection but actually commented on it, his voice now acid with resentment and anger, saying that Tucker did not share his acceptance of the inevitable or his desire to ‘tie up loose ends’ and ‘say what must be said’, but was laboring under the false hope that the two of them would be rescued.

This had clearly proven too strong an irritant for the already aggravated Chief Engineer.  The increase in volume and clarity suggested unmistakably that he had come forward and almost yelled into the microphone, demanding of the lieutenant’s parents whether he had always been this cynical.

The recording terminated at that point with a sound that hinted the ‘stop’ button had been less pressed than slapped.  It was not difficult to imagine that more hot words would have followed.

Had that been the start of a quarrel that had escalated into violence?

There was no doubt that Captain Archer had already reached that conclusion.  Certainly the exchange drew a vivid picture of two frightened, grieving and angry men, confined in a tiny space with little food or water and a very limited supply of air.  Each had evidently reacted according to his nature.  Lieutenant Reed had accepted the fact of their imminent demise, but his fatalism had provoked the more naturally optimistic Commander Tucker, who had probably been trying to keep up his courage even though doubtless being quite as aware of the odds against their survival in this infinitely hostile environment.

Unlike the often quite fiery engineer, the armory officer was temperamentally cool and controlled.  However, being thus rudely interrupted in a final message to the parents for whom he presumably felt at least some filial regard was calculated to goad even the most collected temper.

The recording analysis, however, did not support this theory.  As she pointed out to the captain, the recordings had taken place more than a day before the shuttlepod was brought on board, and the doctor had given it as his opinion that Commander Tucker had been dead less than ten minutes when he was found.

She kept her voice as gentle as she could, but the words had to be said.  She looked fixedly at the computer screen where the passionless analysis was paused where the recording had fallen silent, because it felt far too much like an intrusion to look at the tears in Jonathan Archer’s eyes.

There were still no answers.


	7. Phlox

For several moments the Denobulan doctor stood watching the readouts on the monitor.  During the course of the day there had been several such periods when the brain activity in the man beneath it had suggested he was about to regain consciousness, but on each occasion it had lapsed again.  This time, it appeared to be growing stronger.

He had kept the lieutenant in an induced coma for twenty-four hours, both to give his injuries time to begin the healing process and to give the chemicals in his brain time to normalize.  The latter had been chronically disordered when he had been brought on board, mostly due no doubt to oxygen deprivation and extreme stress, but there had been no time to worry about that when the life was pumping out of the self-inflicted wounds in his thighs and it had taken two of the medical team to hold him down while the third helped Phlox apply pressure on them.  In the end it had taken a shot from the hypospray to quiet him, however acutely inadvisable it was while his condition was still far from established; for one thing, when he was still his heart rate dropped and the pressure behind the bleeding slowed.

Still, it had taken over five hours in surgery to repair all the slashed blood vessels and musculature.  There seemed little doubt that Reed had been trying to sever his femoral arteries, but probably due to diminished co-ordination and muscular weakness, he had not been able to succeed.  He had done an astonishing amount of damage, but fortunately for him _Enterprise_ had come in time.

Not in time for Commander Tucker.  Phlox shook his head in genuine sorrow and bewilderment.  There seemed little doubt that Lieutenant Reed had murdered his companion and senior officer, but until the man woke and gave an account of himself, this must be only conjecture.  He had certainly been in no state to be questioned when his rescuers burst into the shuttle; he hadn’t even seemed to recognize them, but had continued to hack dementedly at his bleeding legs until forcibly prevented.

Since such behavior was utterly and completely out of character for the quiet, reserved Englishman, Phlox had come to the obvious conclusion that for some reason he was not in his right mind.  While the doctor worked on repairing the terrible damage to the lieutenant’s legs, one of his assistants took samples of his blood and prints of his brain scans.  In the quiet hours since, while he waited for his most intractable patient to decide whether to live or die, he’d had time to study these.  They supported the fact that Reed’s brain had been hypoxic.  His thought processes would have been extremely disordered; but disordered enough for him to have mistaken Commander Tucker for an enemy?

Phlox sighed.  The science did not support that.  Although suffering in body and far from strictly mentally stable, the lieutenant should still have been able to make reasonably rational determinations on serious matters.  Anyone expecting him to fire a phase pistol with any accuracy would have been over-optimistic in the extreme, but he was not psychotic.

That left the one inescapable conclusion.  That Malcolm had known what he was doing when he killed his companion and senior officer.

They could have quarreled.  With both men in this state, it would not be wholly beyond belief that a relatively minor difference of opinion might quickly escalate to blows, but the evidence from Commander Tucker’s post-mortem did not point to such a conclusion.  There were no contusions, either on his body or on his killer’s.  His blood revealed a considerable level of alcohol (Reed’s had been the same), but there seemed to have been no initial attack that might somehow have gotten out of hand.  It therefore followed that the lieutenant had conceived and then executed a deliberate act of murder; the initial blow to the carotid artery had been carefully aimed and was no clumsy slash.  The second was far less neat, and suggested panic; perhaps there had been resistance.  But if so, it would not have lasted for long.

At that thought Phlox put his face in his hands.  Two fine young men, splendid young officers with their whole lives ahead of them.  What a waste – what an appalling, tragic waste.

A deep indrawn breath from the direction of the bed alerted him to the fact that his patient was regaining consciousness.  Once the sedative had been withdrawn this was bound to happen soon, and he was under strict orders to inform the captain when it happened.

Heavy-hearted, he stepped to the comm link.  “Phlox to Captain Archer.”

_“Archer.”_

“Mister Reed is waking up, Captain.  I believe you wished to be here when that happens.”

The comm link closed without reply, but he could almost hear Captain Archer snarling _‘You're damn right I do!’_ It was no surprise when, moments later, the ship’s Commanding Officer strode into Sickbay, his XO brisk on his heels.

“Has he spoken?” he rapped out.

“Not yet, Captain.  He is not fully awake yet.”  Phlox could sympathize with Archer’s grief and anger, but Reed was still a very sick man and therefore under the doctor’s authority.  He was not going to allow even a patient facing such awful charges as mutiny and murder to be interrogated and browbeaten while he was too weak and confused to defend himself properly.

The captain pushed aside the privacy curtain and marched to the tactical officer’s bedside.

The lieutenant’s eyelids fluttered and his lips moved as though he was trying to speak.  His left hand was bandaged, having suffered second-degree burns (probably from being pressed to the deck plating in the shuttlepod while he lay on it), and resting on top of the sheet, which was elevated from his pelvis down to keep any unnecessary pressure off his bandaged legs.

“Lieutenant Reed!” barked the captain.  “Report!”

T’Pol, half a pace to his rear, folded her arms.  She said nothing, but her lips were compressed.  Phlox caught her eye and frowned slightly, reading the mirror of his own concern.

The still drugged and drowsy patient clearly heard the summons.  A frown line dipped between his brows, and his lips moved again. Finally, with an obvious effort, his eyes opened.  He blinked up uncomprehendingly at the captain.  “S-Sir…?” he slurred.

Captain Archer leaned closer;  Phlox tensed.  “Lieutenant.  You were in the shuttlepod with … with Commander Tucker.  _What do you remember?_ ”

“Captain.” T’Pol’s voice was level.  “Mister Reed is unlikely to be in any condition yet to give an accurate account of what happened.  Furthermore, he should not be asked to speak without being warned that any answers he provides may constitute evidence in a court of law.”

Malcolm’s eyes traveled to her slowly, his expression one of confusion and growing fear.  “… ‘law’?” he whispered.

“Yes.  A court of law.  A _Starfleet tribunal._ A _court martial._ ”  The captain was almost spitting out the words.  “Trip’s dead, Lieutenant.  Anything you feel you can tell us about that?”

Reed had already been pale after his brush with death, but at these words the blood drained out of his face.

“Captain!” T’Pol almost shouted.  “Your behavior is completely improper!”

Phlox looked automatically at the readouts on the monitor above the head of the bed.  The pulse rate had been slow, but now it bounded – far from an ideal outcome in a patient just emerging from sedation.  Quite apart from the impropriety of the attack, it was putting stress on a body that was only just starting to recover from a traumatic ordeal; true, it was unlikely that the shock would prove fatal, but it was hardly likely to be beneficial.  “Captain Archer, this man is my patient and you are out of order!” he snapped.  “If you cannot restrain yourself, kindly leave Sickbay – or I will have Sub-Commander T’Pol escort you out!”

Archer’s head whipped up.  He was white with fury, but Phlox had out-stared both mutinous offspring and hormonal wives in his time; his scowl was as forbidding as it was rare.

“Captain.”  Unusually, his Vulcan XO touched him on the shoulder; her voice was quieter now, but firm.  “If we are to abide by the regulations regarding the treatment of a suspect in an inquiry, I believe it will be best for us to give Lieutenant Reed time to regain full consciousness before we attempt to question him.  I am sure that Doctor Phlox will advise you when he judges his patient to be in a fit state to be interviewed, and to disregard his advice would be to prejudice the outcome of the case.”

“That will certainly be the most sensible course of action.”  The Denobulan glanced with concern and some pity at the man in the bed between them, whose horror-filled eyes had never left the captain’s face, and resolved privately that it would be some considerable while before he made that judgment.

The captain clearly hesitated, but allowed himself to be persuaded – that suggestion that to do otherwise would risk invalidating the results of his interrogation had been a master-stroke.  He left the room, with T’Pol still in his wake, and not a word or a look for either of the men he left behind.

Lieutenant Reed’s face was ashen.  His bandaged hand was pawing helplessly at the blanket, while his free arm pushed to get free of the cover restraining it.  His gaze followed his CO from the room and then transferred itself to Phlox.

“A dream… surely … it was a dream,” he whispered.  “It just feels like one of those terrible dreams….”

“You must rest, Mister Reed.” Suspecting that he was about to try something incredibly foolish like trying to sit up, the doctor pressed gently on his shoulder, keeping him still.  “Your body needs time to recover.”

The Englishman had very little strength left after the surgery.  It was only a couple of seconds before he sagged back on to the bed.  “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said at last, very low.

He was not asking about his recovery.  Phlox paused, and that pause plainly said all that was necessary.

The gray gaze left him, slowly.  It rose to the ceiling and stayed there, while all the emotion in the face drained terribly out of it, leaving the lieutenant a husk that still breathed.

“Malcolm.”  It was like speaking into an empty room whose tenant has long since left, but the doctor doggedly persevered.  “You were hypoxic and hypothermic.  Your mental functions would have been impaired, to some degree at least.”

“I was hypoxic, hypothermic and _drunk on duty._ ” So might a corpse sound, speaking from the grave with the flat finality of damnation.  It admitted no possibility of forgiveness, in this world or the next.

Phlox sighed.

“I’m ready to speak to the captain, doctor,” that slow, cold voice continued, pronouncing every syllable with a deliberate care that said speech still came to him with some difficulty.  “I don’t see what waiting will achieve. I remember what I did.  I remember everything.”

“In your Armory, Lieutenant, _you_ give the orders.  In Sickbay, _I_ give them.  And _I_ say that Captain Archer will have to wait until _I_ judge you fit to give clear, complete and accurate testimony.”

A corner of the hard mouth twitched in what might have been the bitterest shadow of a smile, but he said nothing.

He would wait with patience for his appointment with the hangman.


	8. Sato

_Behavior in keeping with that expected of a Starfleet officer._

The chant ran through Hoshi’s mind over and over again, like a mantra:  _…that expected of a Starfleet officer …that expected of a Starfleet officer …of a Starfleet officer…._

So as a good Starfleet officer should, she was sitting here at the comm station, working on the linguistics database.  Except that if her life had depended on it, she couldn’t have said whether she’d keyed in the basics of Tesnian syntax or her grandmother’s _dorayaki_ recipe.

The captain had been absent from the Bridge for a while, along with T’Pol who seemed to have become his constant shadow.  Now he was in his Ready Room, and the Vulcan had seated herself silently at the Science Station.  The chair in the middle of the Bridge remained untenanted, and the atmosphere was one of fear and uncertainty.

Travis sat unmoving at the helm.  He had nothing to do except monitor the movement of any stray stellar body that might wander close to the ship, and his gaze at the screen and his monitors was far more tense and apprehensive than the situation warranted; she suspected that his mind was far away.  He’d filled her in at breakfast with the whispered story of his visit to Sickbay and his encounter with the captain afterwards.  Apparently the few hours of sleep he’d snatched since hadn’t managed to make any of it make more sense than it had at the time, and it didn’t make any more to her now she had it.

Trip… how could Trip possibly be dead?  He’d been so full of life, so full of determination to live out his dreams of exploring Space, so committed to the whole NX project.  So wonderful to have as a friend, so bright and talented and good-looking; everyone said he’d head up the whole Warp Drive program in just a few years…

Well.  Maybe he would have done, they’d never know now; soon there’d be a service, and the body that had housed all that brightness and talent would be shot into space in a torpedo casing.  All that would be left would be the memories, and a name in the history books that occupied only a paragraph or so rather than the pages he might have had…

But what would those history books have to say about another officer from the NX-01?

Malcolm.

At first she’d been very wary of him.  His stiff manner did not encourage friendly approaches, and during that early brief exchange between them when she’d been worrying about frostbite to her fingers on the cold Bridge, his attitude had teetered on the brink of mockery.  She hadn’t been sure how to take it, and so she’d retreated into cool formality with him, which he returned, seemingly indifferent to her wariness.

She wasn’t sure when it had started to change.  It was a slow process, for he seemed to make little effort to make people like him, preferring instead to keep them at a distance.  When the captain had charged her with finding out his favorite food, the task had been a burden she would have refused if she could, feeling neither warmth for the intended recipient nor enthusiasm for talking to his friends and relations.

But during that search, she had discovered a man whose isolation was not confined only to his colleagues.  Viewing a recording of the captain’s interview with Reed’s parents, she had discovered that even they barely knew him, and indeed hardly seemed to care that he was almost a stranger to them. 

Her own childhood had been a lonely one, chiefly because with her gift for languages she’d been a ‘child prodigy’.  Much of what ordinary children enjoyed was withheld from her because it was felt more important to nurture her talent.  So when it seemed to her that Malcolm Reed must also have been a lonely child, it generated a little fellow-feeling for him.  Observing him, she came to the conclusion that he was stiff and formal because he was socially awkward.  Though at first he’d seemed determined to hang on for dear life to that wall of ice he’d built around him, she noticed that although it took a little time, he slowly began to respond to the friendliness of the crew around him.  And with the thaw, it began to become apparent that beneath the ice was a man of warmth after all.  He was never going to be the social hub of the ship, but the shy smile that had first made its appearance over a slice of birthday cake sometimes greeted her when she walked into the Mess or onto the Bridge.

Handsome?  No, not particularly.  But there was something about his face when he smiled, something that quite transformed it.  At rest it was somber, even harsh, but the smile made it gentle.

Travis, of course, made twenty out of four plus four.  That was what came of being born a Boomer – nothing much else to do on the long hauls except speculate over shipboard romances.  But even on _Enterprise_ , a ship of exploration, there were long periods when nothing much happened, and she and Travis were good enough friends to enjoy a tease.  He pretended to believe that she’d made a conquest of the dashing lieutenant, and she pretended that there wasn’t a single word of truth in it; even though there were moments when … well, occasionally she thought there might be just one or two, and wasn’t altogether displeased by the idea.  Certainly that blissful hour in Decon after their adventure aboard the _Somraw_ had given her an eye-opening view of the lean, muscular body that was so effectively concealed by the ubiquitous Starfleet coverall, and hell, a girl could look, couldn’t she?

It had been something and nothing.  Just one thread out of the many of which life on board ship was woven, hundreds of them interlinking and criss-crossing to create a tapestry where everyone was there to play their part, to look out for one another and do their best to make sure that the voyage wrote a brilliant page in history.

Until yesterday, that had been true.  Now one of the threads, just one, had pulled – and it felt as though the whole tapestry was in danger of falling apart.

Trip was dead.

Malcolm was in Sickbay, seriously injured.  So seriously injured, indeed, that yesterday Phlox hadn’t even been able to say for certain that he’d survive.

The captain was prowling the corridors of the ship at night, warning off anyone from a possible interference in a ‘criminal investigation’.

What the hell had happened in that shuttlepod?  How had Trip died?  How was Malcolm involved, and why did the captain clearly feel he was responsible?

And above all – what would happen now?


	9. Reed

Malcolm was making love.

Her skin was the warm ivory he had always thought it would be, silken against his.  Her small, perfect breasts were crushed against his chest.

He moved slowly, carefully, restraining his anguished need.  _It’s been so long ... so long..._

Her hair, dark and tangled, spread on the pillow.  Her eyes, closed in the familiar rigor of concentration.  _“I’m coming, Malcolm.”_

Tears seeped suddenly from beneath her eyelashes, ran down her cheeks like pearls, dismaying him.  She was so beautiful, even when she wept.  He didn’t stop; he couldn’t.  _“But can you hold your breath for eleven hours?”_

“No,” he whispered.

His face was buried in the angle of her neck.  She smelt of vanilla and ginger and musk. 

In the ivory skin opposite his face a small, lipless mouth opened.  _“Why, Malcolm?”_ it asked.

He shut his eyes briefly.  She was so beautiful.  It had been such a long time.... _Don’t ask._

_“You should have let me go the first time, Loo-tenant,”_ the mouth said sadly. 

The tears were pouring faster now, but they were no longer pearls.  They were beads of garnet, tens of them, scores of them, hundreds of them, washing over his face, cutting off his oxygen supply.  A tiny, delicate, forked tongue came out of the slit in her neck and licked at them, and the mouth around it smiled.  _“Cap’n’s  goin’ to be real mad at you, Malcolm.”_

Air, air, there was no air!  His lungs heaved.  He pushed her away, but still the beads ran, thousands of them now, racing across the rumpled bed as though endowed with a life of their own and rushing up and over his body to fill his mouth and nose.  Drowning him – _drowning–!_

_“TRIP, I’M SORRY!”_

He woke with a gasp.

Sickbay.

No rumpled bed, no lovely, weeping bedmate, nothing on his face but his own tears and sweat.  Phlox must have woken him, for the doctor was standing by the bedside, compassion on his face.

Malcolm swallowed drily.  His lungs were still heaving.  He drank the ample oxygen as only those who know what it is not to have any drink it, while beneath his ribcage his heart was bounding in the juddering leaps that are the aftermath of a close brush with the Grim Reaper in person.

“For God’s sake, doctor, can we get it over with?” he managed to ask.

Phlox sighed.  “You should drink some water at least, Lieutenant.  If you become any more dehydrated, I shall have to put you on an IV.”

There was a glass of water on the night stand.  He drank it in a couple of gulps.  The glass rattled against his teeth because his hand was shaking so badly.

When that was gone it was refilled – twice.  He knew the score.  The Denobulan git had the upper hand with this one, and was milking it for all he was worth.

What was resistance going to achieve?

_Nothing._

Still, the mere mechanics of drinking the fluid helped to steady him, though the fleeting thought that he’d rather it had been Scotch made him flinch away almost physically.

When he was done, Phlox took the glass from him.  “I shall summon the captain if you wish, Lieutenant,” he said gently.  “But as your physician, I must put it on record that I still have grave doubts that you are in a fit condition to testify.  And you know how serious the charges are that you will be facing.”

Malcolm achieved a parody of a smile.  From the memories of years a quote found his tongue.  ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly’,” he answered.  “In short, Doctor – let’s get it over with.”

In the few moments while he waited, the singular aptitude of that quote rolled over him like a wave, so that he quaked with silent, gall-bitter laughter.  Macbeth; they’d studied it in his last year at Secondary School. _‘British schools have a core curriculum.  It serves to provide a well-rounded education.’_ Oh, the Devil must have been chortling in hell as he said those words.

He was the accursed Thane, confronting his own inescapable act.  The deed was done, and nothing left to face but ruin and death.

“Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant / There's nothing serious in mortality; / All is but toys; renown and grace is dead; / The wine of life is drawn, the mere lees  / Is left this vault to brag of." 

He opened his eyes again, and realised he must have declaimed it aloud.  It must be some lingering after-effect of those drugs Phlox had pumped him full of; when he stopped paying attention, he was drifting in and out.  T'Pol and the captain had arrived, and were staring at him.

“Lieutenant.”  Archer spoke stiffly.  “The doc says you’re well enough to talk to us now.”  His tone was ambiguous, which was understandable; half of him probably doubted whether an officer facing charges like these and lying in bed quoting Shakespeare at the ceiling was really capable of providing reliable testimony, and the other half was sorry he was in any condition to speak at all – i.e., that he was still breathing.

Maybe it was the drugs that made this so incredibly funny that Malcolm found tears gathering in his eyes, though he wasn’t sure they were tears of laughter.  At any rate, he blinked them away, and was relieved that none of them fell; _conduct befitting a Reed_ , and all that.

“Yes, sir.” His gaze flicked briefly to T'Pol, and fell.  Bloody bourbon.  He was ashamed of his ungentlemanly conduct.  _‘She’s got an awfully nice bum.’_ So she had, and it was hard to imagine he was the only man on the ship to have admired it, but he must have been as drunk as a wheelbarrow to have confided his admiration to Commander Tucker.  Couldn’t he have admired anything nobler about her – her intellect, her dry wit, her patience, her vast scientific knowledge?  No, it’d had to be her arse he mentioned, sniggering like a schoolboy.

No time was wasted on pointless niceties, for which he was grateful.  The sub-commander placed a recording device on the night-stand and told him that the conversation would be recorded and, together with the footage from the security cameras in Sickbay, would be made available during any court proceedings that might follow.  He was to consider himself under caution, and was entitled to legal representation.  There being no trained legal counsel aboard _Enterprise_ , it was his right to refuse to be interviewed until such counsel was available.

“I understand the legal position, Sub-Commander,” he said wearily.  “I waive my right to representation.  I’ll represent myself.”

“Captain,” Phlox broke in, “as the lieutenant’s physician and _Enterprise_ ’s Chief Medical Officer, I wish to place on record my professional opinion that he is not fully recovered from his injuries or subsequent treatment, and this should be taken into full consideration when reviewing any evidence he may provide at this present time.”

Good old Phlox; still sticking up for even a murderer. A spike of gratitude would have flickered into existence on the chart of Malcolm's emotions, but it was short-lived, and collapsed beneath the weight of his guilt.  Why should anyone defend him?  He had betrayed his trust, he had betrayed his rank, he had betrayed his honour.  There was nothing left to do but somehow endure the process that would end his career and commit him to the punishment due.

“Lieutenant.”  T'Pol’s gaze was piercing.  “Be very sure you are able to give a fair and coherent account of events before you proceed with this.”

He’d always admired her, and not – whatever the bourbon might have had to say on the matter – just because she had an awfully nice bum; sometimes, seated at the Tactical Station, he’d silently cheered on her attempts to rein in the captain’s reckless enthusiasm for risk-taking.  You didn’t have to be the life and soul of the party to have worth and wisdom, and he thought there was much to be said for the Vulcan qualities of stoicism and reserve.  Once upon a time he’d actually wondered if there might be any possibility of developing quite a close relationship with T'Pol – a _working_ relationship, nice bum notwithstanding; he’d felt that there was much he might be able to learn from her.  (The thought of any other kind of relationship had quite simply never crossed his mind.  The idea that she might find him sexually interesting might be an attractive fantasy, but in real life he would honestly have dismissed it as ludicrous.)

Well.  A few lessons in meditation might come in handy, if she could spare the time, and was still willing once she’d heard what he had to say.  The chances were that he’d have plenty of time to practise, in between here and eternity.

“Thank you, Sub-Commander,” he replied.  “But I’m quite sure.  I remember everything that happened.  And I swear on my–” He’d been about to say _honour_ but the word stuck in his throat.  “I swear on everything I hold dear,” he resumed after a moment, “that I will tell the truth, omitting nothing pertinent to the facts of the case.”

“It is up to the presiding officers to decide what is or is not pertinent,” she said mildly.  “You should reveal all of the facts as you remember them, without reserve.”

The captain had been silent since his initial words, but Malcolm didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was for the lack of anything to say.  His whole demeanour was that of a tiger waiting to pounce on a goat tethered out for the slaughter.

He sighed inwardly.  Time to start bleating, he supposed.


	10. Archer

There being nothing to be achieved by lurking around outside Sickbay and further antagonizing his CMO, Jonathan returned to the Bridge.  T’Pol went to the Science Station, saying she needed to study the reports from Engineering on the condition of the shuttlepod; there were reports waiting for him in his Ready Room – one thing that never, ever varied was the number of reports that apparently required nothing less than a captain’s signature to pass muster – but right now he couldn’t imagine himself sitting down and reading more than a sentence of the first.

But there seemed little point in sitting in his chair when there was nothing to see and no orders to give, and no prospect of anyone saying anything he needed to hear.  So, the Ready Room it was.

But once in there, he regretted his decision.  It was always a little cramped, and whoever had designed the height of the ceiling had plainly not given a moment’s thought to the possibility that the captain who would one day occupy the room might be taller than your average ten-year-old.  Although it had been irritating at first, he’d gotten used to it, and most days he just ducked his head in the appropriate places without much thought.

Not today.

Today he felt caged in.  His grief was tearing him asunder.  He’d sent Trip out in that shuttlepod and Trip was dead.  He’d hired Malcolm Reed to keep his crew safe and Reed had murdered one of them.

He pulled up the reports on his Tactical Officer and started going through them.  School reports, outstanding, Academy reports, outstanding.  Qualifications, top in every field.  Then you hit the brick wall.  _Classified, classified, classified._ Personnel reports, redacted.  Commendations from his commanding officers, redacted.  Verified by Starfleet, true, but who had those officers been?  Where had he served?  What he _done_ , dammit?  Where had he served?  Where had he been?

Who _was_ he?

Jon rested his elbows on the desk and dropped his head into his hands.  He should be acting like Captain Archer, not Captain Ahab.  He’d always been driven by his emotions (AG had warned him about that, back in the day, late one memorable evening at the 602 Club), but he’d believed he was getting better, was starting to act in a way more in keeping with the rank he occupied.  A captain should think with his head before his heart, and though he’d probably always be driven by his gut feelings to some extent, he thought he was getting that aspect of his captaincy under control.

But how were you supposed to keep your feelings under control when your best buddy had been just … _slaughtered_?  By his own junior officer, a guy who’d always led you to believe his whole soul lay in keeping the ship safe?

What did you have to _be_ to kill a man like Trip, a man you’d worked with and eaten with and watched movies with?

What sort of a mask did you have to wear, to cover that sort of evil as successfully as Reed had done?

_Innocent till proven guilty._ The inescapable words rang in his head, their note as false as that of an ill-cast bell. The beat of his heart said _killer, killer, killer._

He’d never been good at patience.  But Phlox couldn’t protect Reed forever.

And then – however the revelation might wring him – he’d find out what had happened, if he had to tear the Brit limb from limb to get at the truth.

=/\=

But time had to be got through somehow, so he tackled the reports after all; tried to be interested in the fact that crew efficiency had improved by 0.42% in the previous month, and that Crewman Shelley had reported a recurring squeak in the flooring on E Deck (presumably the one in here had migrated).  Astrometrics had handed in a preliminary report on the composition of the largest asteroid in the cluster _Enterprise_ had been investigating when they’d had that encounter with the Tesnian ship, apparently claiming it contained news that would rock the scientific community back on its heels – he’d pass that one on to T’Pol when all this was over with, maybe it’d rock _her_ back on her heels but it sure wasn’t doing anything for _him_ right now _._

Reports, reports, reports.  Read and forgotten, scanned without seeing, words, words and pictures, when all the words he could hear were _Trip, Trip_ and all the pictures were of his buddy sprawled dead across that damned bench, his face still frozen in a grimace of pain and terror.

He couldn’t sit still.  He abandoned the reports and paced around his Ready Room instead, smashing his fists against the walls occasionally.  This captaincy was all he’d ever wanted, the culmination of his father’s dream; and it had cost Trip his life, at the hands of his own junior officer.

The chime sounded.  “Sickbay to Captain Archer.”

He almost leaped across the room to answer it.  “Archer.”

The voice at the other end sounded tired but resigned.  “Mister Reed is ready to speak to you now, Captain.  Whenever it should be convenient.”

_Yes!_

He covered the distance to the door in two strides.  The heads around the Bridge came up like those of startled deer, but he had eyes only for T’Pol.  At a guess she was still going through those reports.  It wasn’t like Vulcans had close friends, or grieved at a death; death, after all, was inevitable, so wouldn’t they consider grief ‘illogical’?

His hours cooped up in the Ready Room with only his anguish for company had ramped up his fading resentment against the Vulcan interloper on his ship, the XO who’d seemed more interested in defending the criminal than seeking justice for the victim.  But as she looked up he saw the sternly-controlled sympathy in her eyes, and realized with a pang of shame that her conduct had indeed been more professional than his own during the previous visit to Sickbay; and resolved as he followed her into the turbo-lift that he’d do all he could to act as the captain he was supposed to be, no matter what the provocation to come.

Her initial, terse summary of the reports from Engineering as the elevator carried them down was illuminating.  The shuttle had been undamaged apart from two tiny holes in the hull, suggesting something extremely small and of incredible density had passed straight through it, rupturing the larger of the oxygen cylinders.  The holes had first been plugged from within with, of all things, mashed potato (presumably from one of the meals the shuttlepod carried as emergency rations), later replaced with valve sealant, but the loss of oxygen had been critical, the contents of that cylinder irreplaceable.  It explained why the shuttlepod had been so bitterly cold; the officers inside it had clearly had to make the choice between keeping warm or diverting the additional power to the atmosphere recyclers in order to make their now desperately short supply of air last a little longer.

This would undoubtedly have been the incident that had forced them to the equally-desperate expedient of blowing up their impulse drive.  With comms down, they had no way of alerting _Enterprise_ to their danger.  Their only means of signaling had been to use the one thing that would create an energy signature on T’Pol’s scanner – a cry for help they didn’t even know had been seen, or would be answered.

When Jon and T’Pol entered Sickbay, sure enough Reed seemed a little more ‘together’ than he’d done earlier; the shock was done with.  Although he looked gray, when the interview began he spoke readily enough, his voice low and level.   When questioned, he answered promptly and fully, though never – not once – giving any detail that could be described as personal.  It was as though all the humanity in him had bled out into those damned recordings he’d made, and left behind a machine that recorded events without a single iota of passion.

“We’ve listened to the recordings you made, Lieutenant,” Jon cut in, as Reed started to speak about the incident where the shuttle was punctured and the air cylinder rendered useless.  “Seems like you and Commander Tucker weren’t exactly getting along by that point.”

He saw the swallow.  The recital that had been steady slowed a little, as though the Englishman was now choosing his words with particular care.  “I believe that the commander – took exception to my desire to avoid leaving unfinished business behind me.  Business of a personal nature.”

“Even with your parents.”

Faint color had risen into the colorless cheeks at the mention of ‘personal matters’; doubtless he’d never believed he’d still be alive when those recordings were played back.  But at the mention of his parents it ebbed away again, leaving him the color of one long dead.  “As I explained to the commander, sir, my relationship with my family was … not a close one.  The crew of _Enterprise_ was beginning to feel like the family I’d never had.  And I believed – _we_ believed – you were all dead.”

That, at least, had the ring of truth about it.  It tallied with the recordings, and unless Reed had intended from the beginning (for some incalculable reason of his own) to use the outing in the shuttlepod as an opportunity to murder his senior officer, there would have been no reason for him then to have recorded anything other than the truth as he saw it.

“So you quarreled.”

“No, sir.”  The too-careful voice was still steady.  “I would say that we came to a better understanding, actually. It wasn’t  a good situation to find ourselves in, and I won’t deny that some of the things the commander said were personally hurtful.  But he conducted himself for the most part in a completely professional manner.”

“‘For the most part’,” T’Pol observed.  “In what part do you feel that he failed?”

The saddest, bitterest smile Jon had ever seen flickered briefly across Reed’s mouth.  “We knew by then you were still alive.  He never lost hope that _Enterprise_ would come in time, at least for one of us.  I think he simply couldn’t bear to be cooped up with the Angel of Death – and told me so.”

Jon shut his eyes.  “And that was why you killed him.”

The reply was too long in coming.  When it came, it was no more than a whisper.  “He tried to throw himself out of the airlock so I’d survive, and I stopped him.  I was sure you’d come in time, sure you’d see our engine explode and understand … so I forced him down at gunpoint.”

“You had no way of knowing that we had seen it, Lieutenant.  You were therefore reducing your chances of survival.”  T’Pol sounded puzzled.

“Survival _alone!_ ” Muted fire flashed.  “I told you, Sub-Commander, the crew – the ship’s crew – were the family I’d never really had.  And I told him– I said–”

“Go on, Lieutenant.  You are under caution, and this is important,” she prompted gently.

The man in the bed looked down at his bandaged left hand.  The fingers of his undamaged right hand were plucking distressfully at a stray thread he’d managed to pull loose.  When he finally spoke, his voice was even lower than before.  “I told him – that I’d invested far too much time in trying to understand him, and that I wasn’t about to accept it was all for nothing.”

There was a silence.  Jon sat trying to process all this into a picture that made sense.  He could believe without any difficulty that Trip had made the attempt to kill himself in order to save a junior officer’s life, though the thought of the ultra-disciplined tactical officer effectively mutinying against it took some stretching of the imagination.  He hadn’t thought that the bond between the two men was anything like that close.  Sure, they worked together reasonably well, but they’d only known each other for what – seven months?  Hardly long enough to become anything like bosom buddies, given Reed’s extreme reticence.

But maybe that was the real root of the issue here.  A man like Reed keeps the rest of the world at bay so effectively that if ever his defenses _are_ breached, he simply doesn’t know how to handle it. 

Since the start of the voyage, Jon had never really managed to get a handle on his tactical officer’s inner workings.  He was so much a walking rule-book that the man quite effectively hid behind the shell.  That hadn’t seemed to matter so much at first, because there was no doubt that he was an extremely effective officer who ran a tight team and was respected by the people he commanded; his CO had hoped, however, that an opportunity would eventually present itself to get to know him a little better.  Perhaps they could have breakfast one of the days, and see if casual conversation could get him out of his shell.  Sport might be an effective ice-breaker – most Brits were crazy about soccer, and the sports reports said the World Cup competition was running right now.  The captain knew next to nothing about it, but was always ready to be interested if that was what it took.

Well.  That was never going to happen now.  But along with all the rest of his hidden side, Reed’s sexual leanings were a mystery too.

Had he fallen in love with Trip?

If so, it was doomed.  Jon was as sure as he possibly could be that Trip had been strictly heterosexual.  But the idea introduced all sorts of ugly possibilities into the mix.

Reed could have been driven by the desperation of their situation into confessing his feelings for the other man.

If that had happened – how would Trip have reacted?

Under ordinary circumstances, there could be no doubt that however surprised he might have been he’d have handled the situation with professionalism and compassion; he’d suffered enough heartaches of his own to feel for another man’s pain.  Now, however–

Had some form of rejection led to tragedy?

_Still waters run deep_ , was the saying.  Reed was still, there was no doubt of that; his Starfleet records said he was also deep.

Deep enough to love in silence, showing nothing till there was nothing else left to show?

The fingers were still worrying and tearing at the thread.  Jon stared at them, picturing them wet with Trip’s blood.

“How did Commander Tucker react to your intervention?” T’Pol’s voice was cool.  How deeply he envied her lack of feeling.

The lieutenant rested his head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling.  “He threatened to ‘bust my ass back to Crewman Second Class for insubordination’.”

Somehow the English voice had acquired the faintest hint of a Floridian accent.  It was less the sound of the vowels than the speed at which he produced them, but somehow he conjured up the very picture of an infuriated Trip, leaning down out of the airlock to bawl out a junior officer who was defying him.

The picture was so real that Jon suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore.  The backs of his eyes were burning with unshed tears.  “Stop the damned interview,” he said huskily.  “Just – just let’s all take a break.”

Reed said nothing.  Phlox nodded, clearly relieved. 

T’Pol surveyed him with eyes that suspended judgment on the frailties of Human emotion.  “I believe that it would be in order for the interview to be suspended for ten minutes.”

Jon didn’t wait to hear any more.  He walked out of Sickbay and headed for his private Mess, his strides down the corridors so long that she almost had to run to keep up with him.

She headed to the drinks dispenser, while he almost fell into a chair at his table.  It was too late to stop the tears and he didn’t try, but sobbed aloud into his hands.

The spasm was violent, but brief.  He was already pulling himself together by the time she set down a mug of steaming coffee in front of him.

The stuff was too sweet, and so strong it was almost undrinkable, but as he sipped cautiously at it he could feel the heat of it burning down to his stomach, bolstering him.  He watched her quietly take measured sips of her own drink – peppermint tea, by the smell – and was grateful for her practicality.  She’d brought a couple of napkins from the dispenser and placed them silently on the table, and when he’d downed about half the contents of his mug he set it down and wiped away the worst of the evidence of his grief.  There was a washroom a couple of meters away; when they were through here he’d pay a call and wash his face, make it presentable again before steeling himself to listen to the rest of the account.  Because he was going to get through this – somehow.  Today, right now.  He couldn’t face another hour, leave alone another night, not knowing why Trip had died.


	11. T'Pol

She watched the captain finish his coffee slowly.  His hands were cupped around it, perhaps relishing the comfort of its warmth.

Her own tea seemed strangely flavorless.  She drank it because her body required hydration for maximum efficiency and because even drinks produced by the machines on board ship contained beneficial antioxidants.  Peppermint tea was widely held to have a calming influence, and while there seemed little scientific basis for the claim, drinking it was part of her routine on board ship.  Anything that bound her to routine helped to maintain her calm, whether or not the liquid in question helped. 

At this present moment it was more important than ever that she maintain her customary impartiality.  The captain was trying hard to remain composed, but this outburst of grief had been almost inevitable – and she feared that worse was to come when they finally reached the point where Lieutenant Reed had to reveal the details of exactly what had happened to Tr– Commander Tucker.

The truth was that she was not entirely sure that she would be able to maintain her Vulcan stoicism at that point either.  Everything depended on exactly what Reed would say, and how he would say it.  It was quite out of the question that he would have done what he had for no reason at all, but what could those reasons be?  If his account was to be believed (and so far she saw no reason to doubt it), he had effectively used force to keep Commander Tucker alive, and then a short while later almost certainly killed him.  The dichotomy between those two acts was so hard to comprehend that until the man actually explained himself she hesitated to even guess at an explanation.  Certainly Humans were often bewilderingly erratic in their reasoning and behaviors, but the lieutenant had never struck her as being erratic in anything.  On the contrary, she had always approved his disciplined attitude and well-ordered mental processes; sometimes, indeed, she had thought him almost Vulcan in those respects, and that was one of the greatest compliments she could have paid him.

_Killed him…_ The significance of those words suddenly struck her, so that she had to swallow hard.  Trip was dead.

Trip.  Of what use was it now to cling to the formality of ‘Commander Tucker’?  He had been – yes, she would say it, if only in the privacy of her own thoughts – special.  She had thought of him as ‘Trip’, even if the proper observance of shipboard discipline demanded she use his name and rank when speaking aloud; it was probably the first time she had ever understood that uniquely Human propensity for nicknames that so mystified  her fellow Vulcans.  Abbreviations of first names were sensible, though she was perfectly comfortable with ‘Jonathan’ for the man in front of her.  But ‘Charles’ had been altogether too formal and proper for the ebullient chief engineer.

But special or not, he was dead, and the world was poorer for his loss.  In some way she found hard to define (and preferred not to examine too closely until she’d had the chance to meditate), _her_ world was the poorer for it.  In a way that no Human had done before, he had somehow transformed his species from an object of study into an object of fascination.  She strongly doubted whether Ambassador Soval would have approved if he had ever had the faintest suspicion of just how intriguing she had begun to find this particular representative of a vastly inferior species.

The captain finished his coffee and, after staring into the empty cup for a few moments, heaved a sigh and stood up.  She laid down her own cup and rose too, responding with only a nod to his “Guess we’d better get it over and done with.”

It was illogical to wish the corridors longer, or to wish to travel them more slowly in order to put off the moment when she had to set eyes on the lieutenant again.  She reprimanded herself severely for this, but was satisfied that no onlooker could have perceived her foolishness from her behavior.  Even her face (she was reasonably sure) betrayed nothing of her inner turmoil when she was seated once more beside the captain in Sickbay and the activation of the recording device signaled the recommencement of the interview.

“So you forced Commander Tucker down from the airlock,” Captain Archer resumed, his voice now entirely under control.  “What happened then?”

“Well – I had the phase pistol.  There was some energy left in that.”  Reed seemed to be staring into the distance, his face remote.  “I set it on full and aimed it at the hull beside the bench where we were sitting.  The hull wouldn’t be significantly damaged, but it would absorb the energy and heat up.  I thought it might help, but in actual fact it didn’t, much.  The metal was too cold by then, and the power cell was discharged fairly quickly – it’s not made for prolonged use.”

T’Pol nodded.  The engineering department’s report on the shuttlepod had noted signs of scorching on the inside of the shuttepod, just where he described, and the presence of a fully discharged phase pistol discarded on the floor.

“And then?” asked the captain, too carefully neutral.

“We waited.” The stare looked far beyond _Enterprise_ , into a world where the thermometer fell inexorably and the air became fouler and fouler.  “There was nothing else we could do.  We just – waited.”

Sickbay was comfortably warm by Human standards, if no more than tepid for a Vulcan.  Nevertheless, they all saw Reed shudder convulsively.  “It was so cold,” he whispered.  “And it was the waiting, knowing it was going to get worse when you already couldn’t bear it…”

He swallowed.  Abruptly his gaze shortened and his eyes snapped to the captain’s, wide gray pools of horrified memory.  “Have you ever watched anyone suffocate?”

“No.”  The word seemed to emerge with an effort.

“I have.” His voice had dropped to a whisper again.  “You don’t forget it, if you’ve seen it happen.  It’s an awful death.  Slow.  Agonising.  You keep hoping they’re dead and then they aren’t, they’re still suffering, still trying to get one more breath…”

The truth dawned, but the captain had to swallow twice before he could say the words.  “You … you killed him to _save him from suffocating?”_

Vulcans did not believe in the existence of supernatural beings, but for a moment T’Pol could almost believe in the existence of a hell, from which the lieutenant was suddenly laughing, wild, unhinged laughter that broke in the middle.  “Yes, that’s exactly what I did,” he gasped.  “He never lost faith, but I did.  I thought you hadn’t seen the signal.  I thought both of us were going to die, and I couldn’t … I couldn’t bear to see him die like that.”

Captain Archer’s fists were clenched in his lap as though he were restraining them from leaping out of their own accord to do the Englishman violence.  “Ten minutes!  Couldn’t you have waited _ten minutes longer?_ ” he shouted.

“No, sir, I couldn’t!” Reed shouted back.  “I did it because damn near didn’t have the strength left to do it at all, and as it was I’d left it so late I bloody botched it!  I wanted to take him out cleanly, if I’d have done it properly he’d have bled out before he knew what was happening, but I was too cold and too slow, and I botched it!  And then I had to look him in the eyes and finish him off!”

Normally the lieutenant hid his feelings, whatever they might be, but his iron discipline was shattered now.  The whole tale of his anguish was naked on his face.

“I had to kill myself, then,” he went on, his voice quieter, but shaking.  “There was always the risk I might be found by – by forces hostile to Starfleet, before _Enterprise_ arrived – before I suffocated. 

“By that time I wasn’t sure I could do the neck cut properly on myself.  And if I could – if it worked – why should I have it easier than the man I’d murdered?  So I took the other route.  I knew I could do that.”  His face crumpled.  “Or I thought I could….”

“But Lieutenant,” Phlox intervened,  his tone puzzled, “you must have understood you were safe when we entered the shuttlepod.  That there was no longer any need for you to die.”

Reed’s gaze rolled towards him, irony-filled.  “You think not, Doctor?”

“He was a coward, wanting to escape the consequences.”  Archer spoke with venom.  “He knew he’d made the biggest mistake of his life and he didn’t want to face a trial.  So he _pretended_ to be trying to kill himself.  Probably thought he’d get off with some kind of plea-bargain of diminished responsibility or something.”

The lieutenant said nothing, but T’Pol suspected that it was because his whole being was concentrated on absorbing the blow of these words.  After a moment, during which he simply stared at the captain as though he’d never seen him before, he bowed his head and stared at his hands, now motionless on the blanket.   “That’s my testimony," he said at last, very low.  “It’s the truth, every word.  I’ll repeat it under oath.  I murdered him.  I’m guilty.”

_Guilty of what?_ thought T’Pol.  Of making a mistake?  A terrible mistake, true, but a mistake nonetheless.  It would cost him his career and maybe his freedom, but she thought that these were the least of his concerns.

She thought, too, that the captain had made a grievous misjudgment in that terrible accusation.  As a member of the V’Shar, she had access to certain avenues of information that even he did not.  She was aware, therefore, that Lieutenant Reed had worked for Section 31, Starfleet’s shadowy Covert Operations arm.  He had been a valued member of one of their ‘dirty tricks’ teams, and it was entirely likely that the Section could still have found a use for him even if convicted.  An escape from prison would have been well within their remit to contrive, and he would only have had to meekly plead guilty, accept his sentence, and wait for rescue.  He could have escaped justice, disappearing back forever into the shadows to which he had once belonged.  Doubtless he knew this as well as she did.

The door to freedom lay open for him, and he had not taken it.  He had chosen to die, and held to that choice even when rescue was possible and a career – even if not one aboard _Enterprise_ – was there for the taking.

She halted the recording device.  Captain Archer’s bitter accusation was understandable in the circumstances, but it was prejudicial and inaccurate, based on incomplete information.  She suspected that later he might come to regret it, but right now he was driven by grief, and Humans had such inadequate control over their emotions.

“Thank you for your testimony, Lieutenant,” she said evenly.  “I imagine the captain will require time to consider your evidence before he reports to Starfleet.”

Reed nodded silently, still not looking up.

She caught Phlox’s eye.  The Denobulan nodded infinitesimally.  Both of them were of one mind: that Reed needed to rest after this.  He was still a sick man, and there would be plenty of time for him to lie awake and crucify himself after he was committed for trial – assuming the Starfleet psychiatric evaluation to which he would be subjected came to the conclusion that he had been responsible for his actions when he took his senior officer’s life.  There were all sorts of permutations on what could happen, but not one of them included him walking away a free man with a clear conscience.

The captain stood up.  “You’re right.  I’ll get Hoshi to contact Admiral Forrest.  He’ll have to know what’s happened, and then he’ll decide what we have to do.  I’m hoping we won’t have to go back to Earth.  Maybe he’ll arrange for us to rendezvous with a Vulcan ship and do a transfer.  Won’t hurt us to do without a Tactical Officer till HQ get around to appointing a replacement.”

There was still no sound from the man in the bed as his Commanding Officer spoke of having him removed from the ship and replaced as though he were a piece of faulty equipment.

A very considerable period of meditation would be necessary tonight, thought T’Pol.  Even if it robbed her of the prescribed amount of sleep, it would be more important to settle her mind.  There was far too much to consider in ordinary circumstances; and Vulcans were not – as many Humans mistakenly believed – without emotion.  On the contrary, they experienced emotions so powerful that controlling them was an absolute necessity.

This occasion was no exception.  She had listened to the lieutenant’s account of his actions with an unmoved face, but the mind behind it had been in turmoil.  Not until she had restored order to it would she know what the proper actions to take would be, and until then she would suspend judgment. 

Fortunately, the captain seemed aware of her distress, for as they left Sickbay he ordered her to finish her shift early.  She would have advised him to do the same, but it would have been wasted effort; now that he had the facts to hand, he would doubtless want to waste no time in contacting Admiral Forrest.  There would also be the official reports to write up, and maybe doing so would make some small start towards easing his sorrow; routine, however mundane, provides an anchor for the mind.

She hoped too – though without much conviction – that time might bring some softening of his attitude towards Lieutenant Reed.  She herself believed that the officer had told the truth, for it was the only explanation that fitted all the facts that were available.  Despairing, suffering and intoxicated (and she still reserved judgment on whose idea it had been to open that bottle of bourbon in the first place – it seemed most unlikely to have been the sensible lieutenant’s), he had committed a terrible crime.  He deserved the punishment he would make no effort to evade, but he had acted on a mistaken premise, believing that _Enterprise_ would not arrive in time to rescue them.  He had committed the worst of crimes for what he believed at the time to be the best of reasons.  Even if he should be discharged from Starfleet without a stain on his character, however, there was not the faintest shadow of doubt in her mind that he would spend the rest of his life punishing himself without mercy for that error.

As she walked back towards her quarters she found herself thinking heavily that Surak himself would have been hard pressed to find an equitable solution.  But something must be done; and Lieutenant Reed was not the only potential victim.  Should Captain Archer pursue his course of revenge, his captaincy could quite possibly be tainted forever by the specter of his vindictiveness towards an officer who had done entirely the wrong thing for entirely the right reasons.  And, of course, there was still Trip to be accounted for, the innocent and special man whose life had been snatched from him in the most terrible way.

She got out her meditation cushion and placed it on the floor, and lit her candle.

She suspected it was going to be a very long night.


	12. T'Pol

Long practice and iron discipline made it possible, if not easy, for her to clear away the worst of the chaos from her mind.

As always, the candle flame helped.  It was bright and clean and simple, a single petal of brilliance in her otherwise darkened room.  Her eyes rested on it and fixed there as she began the careful process of stilling her racing thoughts.  Until this could be achieved, she would not be able to enter her ‘white space’, where her batteries would recharge and her brain complete the absorption of the day’s events into a format in which she could deal with them with Vulcan efficiency.

It took some time.  Over and over again some scene from that harrowing interview in Sickbay would intrude and shatter her fledgling calm, but she refused to panic.  So trying a day would be bound to have trying consequences, and she would deal with it.  She simply had to learn to ‘ride the waves’, as the Human saying had it, and let each wash of pain carry her until its force was spent.  Once she could meditate, all this would be within her capacity to deal with.  She only had to get there.

And she did get there.  Eventually.  Except that one thing was different.

She wasn’t alone.

He was leaning against a non-existent wall, his arms crossed, and a slightly sardonic smile on his face.  “Bet you didn’t expect to see me here,” he drawled.

She refused to give in to the impulse to rush across and hug him.  That would have been entirely unVulcan and improper.  Besides, he was dead.

“Commander,” she said politely.

“Sub-Commander,” he replied, equally politely.

After that, there did not seem to be anything that it was immediately appropriate to say.

She sat down, her legs crossed, her arms resting on them, and studied him. 

He looked back at her, his smile now a little lopsided.  “Kinda difficult for ya, isn’t it?”

“It is somewhat unexpected,” she admitted.

“I know the feelin’.” He looked around with casual interest.  “You come here every night?”

“Whenever possible.”

He nodded sagely.  “Big thing with you Vulcans, this meditatin’ stuff.  Known that for a long time.  Helps you get your thinkin’ straight, right?”

“Definitely.”  She recalled the occasions when events had prevented her, and shook her head at the unpleasant memories.  “It is absolutely vital for our mental wellbeing.  It is more important to us than sleep.”

“Right.”  A soft chuckle.  “It’s taken you long enough to get here tonight.  Something on your mind, by any chance?”

It occurred to her that if there had not been anything on it before, there certainly was now.  She was talking to someone who had been murdered – who was officially, certifiably dead – and she could perceive no difference in him whatsoever.  He was even still wearing his uniform (presumably the bloodstains had magically removed themselves), and in the still, pure air she could detect the unmistakable and pleasing scent of sandalwood.

“Oh, no.”  A shake of the head.  “You’ve got years an’ years of livin’ to do before you start worryin’ ’bout things like that.  That’s not what I’m here for at all.”

She looked hard at him, but there was no mistaking that blue glint.  He hadn’t said the words ‘I’m not allowed to talk about being dead’, but he might just as well have done.

Vulcans were divided upon the question of whether there was such a thing as the afterlife.  Traditionalists postulated the existence of a _katra_ , whatever that might precisely be, but as a scientist she personally didn’t believe in any such thing.  Therefore this was presumably not Trip Tucker, but some conjuration from her own pysche – perhaps her brain was accessing stored memories to project a lifelike image of him.  A worrying development, but certainly far less worrying than believing she was having a conversation with a ghost.

Humans were fond of the quotation ‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved’.  Vulcans were far less given to discussing their problems, but however reluctant she might have been to confide in another living person, she couldn’t reasonably refuse to confide in a product of her own imagination.

“You can call me your ‘imaginary friend’ if it makes it easier for you,” he said breezily.  “’Been called a whole lot worse’n that before now.”

Whatever he was, he was just as exasperating as the original.  But still she was absurdly glad to see him there, and suddenly it didn’t seem half as ridiculous to talk over the situation with an ‘imaginary friend’.

“ _Now_ you’re gettin’ there.”  He detached himself from his supporting wall and strolled over to her.  They did not touch, but as he squatted comfortably beside her there was nothing that would have suggested he was not real.  She could hear the faint sounds of rubbing cloth as he moved, and his breathing was easy and relaxed.

“Seems you’ve got a packet of trouble aboard _Enterprise_ ,” he went on.  His expression was somber now.  “Whichever way it goes, it’s going to be tough for a while.  I’m real sorry about that.”

“It was hardly your fault,” she felt compelled to point out.

Trip shrugged.  “Might have turned out a whole lot different if I hadn’t opened that bourbon.”

This was incontrovertible, but not a subject she wanted to dwell on.  “Lieutenant Reed has told us exactly what happened,” she observed.  “He is refusing legal representation and intends to plead guilty at his trial.”

“Yeah, tell me something I _couldn’t_ have guessed.”  A snort.  “Not that I exactly _approve_ of what he did.  But hell, if ever there was a guy who’d go lookin’ for trouble if it didn’t come lookin’ for him first!”

She sighed.  “He committed a crime.  He cannot and must not escape the punishment for it.  But the fact remains that he did what he did for what he felt to be good and valid reasons.  He is going to spend the rest of his life paying for what was – however brutal – an act of intended kindness.”

The engineer nodded.  “Tribunal’ll take that into consideration,” he pointed out.  “He’s a respected officer.  Bound to have people speak up for him – give him character references.  You never know, if Phlox does a good enough job with the medical evidence and the psych experts land a few decent punches, he might get away with it.”

“But he should not get away with it!  He _murdered you!_ ”  The cry broke from her before she was well aware the words were on her tongue.  At first she would have snatched them back if that had been possible, but she let them lie, for after all it was the truth; although she was defending the lieutenant from the worst of the captain’s fury, it was more because of her respect for the process of law than any warmth of feeling for the man himself.

“T’Pol.”  His voice was gentle.  “The one thing Malcolm is absolutely not goin’ to do is ‘get away with it’.  You don’t know him at all if you think that.”

She did know him, that was the trouble.  It did not need Trip to tell her that Reed would punish himself far more rigorously than any court could do, and for far longer – for the rest of his days, in fact, however many or few those days might be.

The paradox was absolute, and irreconcilable.  The wrong act for the right reasons.  A crime committed out of kindness.  She had studied the various Human religions, and one of the most often quoted sayings from one of their most important religious figures was ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he give up his life for his friends’.  There was no doubt in her mind that it had been an act of utter self-destruction for Reed to have used that knife on a fellow officer, but he had done it, in order to save him (as he believed) from an even crueller and far more protracted death by suffocation.

Malcolm Reed was not a saint.  Far from it; although even the V’Shar were unable to penetrate the deeper secrets of the extremely secretive organization to which he had belonged, it was well known that their Covert Operations squads worked outside the law, and as a member of one of these he would undoubtedly have performed acts of questionable legality and even more questionable morality.  Few Humans without specialist training and experience would even have attempted that surgical first strike – or, when it failed, have had the hardihood to finish the job.

Kindness and savagery.  Savagery and kindness.  That barbarism that was still so much a part of Humankind, and which Vulcans would so much prefer to believe they had outgrown long ago.  But it was not outgrown, it was simply kept battened down, forcing an outlet only at such times as the _pon farr._ For all that she took conscious pride in her rationality, she knew that she too shared in that primeval heritage.  If she had been in that shuttlepod, watching the Englishman form his murderous intent towards Trip Tucker, she would have torn him apart with her bare hands.

“Yeah.  Tough call, isn’t it.”  Trip grimaced.  “The way I see it, T’Pol, there’s no way this is going to turn out good.  But we’re lookin’ at Malcolm’s future.  Maybe it’s time we started lookin’ at his _past_.”

“Before _Enterprise_.” She glanced sideways, illogically surprised that he had followed her train of thought so closely.  “He was in the service of Starfleet’s Covert Operations arm.  ‘Section 31’.”

“Sure don’t envy him that.”  With a sigh he settled down cross-legged beside her and studied his linked hands.  “It might be a way out, though.”

“He would not take it,” T’Pol said with certainty.  “Even when he must have known he was safe, he still tried to kill himself.  If he had been convicted, the Section would surely still have offered him a way out; a man with such skills is too useful to be left to rot in a prison cell.  He must have known this.  He still does know it.  And I would wager the life of every man and woman aboard _Enterprise_ that if such a way out was to be offered him, he would refuse to take it.”

He heaved another, heavier sigh.  “I can just imagine.  He’d chain himself to the damn prison bed to save himself from bein’ rescued, just so’s he could serve out his sentence in peace.”

She frowned thoughtfully.  Certainly there seemed no prospect of reuniting Reed with his former colleagues, even though they would be highly unlikely to care that he had murdered a senior officer and been dismissed from the respectable side of Starfleet in disgrace.  Even if he was forcibly rescued from captivity, it was all too easy to imagine that the instant he was free to act independently he would make his way to the nearest representative of authority, explain his identity and demand to be reincarcerated.

But a career as a Starfleet officer was closed to him forever now.  Almost certainly a prison sentence awaited him, and if Captain Archer had any influence it would be a lengthy one.  If, as Trip had suggested, he managed to evade a prison sentence, he certainly would not escape a period in a secure hospital until he was considered safe to be released.  Presumably at the end of either of these he would be free to pursue whatever career he chose in the outside world, but at a guess by that time – certainly if he went to prison – the Section would no longer be interested in him.  His skills would be years out of date. 

Vulcans prided themselves on their pragmatism, but even T’Pol could not forbear the reflection that for a man whose career had held such promise three short days ago, it was a grim prospect.  The chances were that when his debt to Starfleet and to society was deemed paid, he would decide that there was no longer any reason to continue living.  Probably very few days would elapse before his body was found somewhere – unless, of course, he decided to dispose of himself in some way that would mean it was never found at all, sparing anyone the necessity of organizing a funeral where there would be not a single mourner.

“I guess when you worked for the Embassy you got to know a whole load of people,” Trip said casually, glancing at her.

“That is part of a diplomat’s duties,” she replied, wondering where this was going.

“Maybe not all of ’em the sort’a people who’d walk into the Embassy by the front door,” he pursued.

“Not all.”  It was hardly a damaging admission, considering she was talking to a product of her own imagination.

“Maybe the sort’a people who might know the same sort’a people in Starfleet.”

She pursed her mouth primly.  Now she did know where this was going, and wasn’t keen on it.  “It’s possible,” she said, doing her best to sound discouraging.

He leaned slightly forward, and peered around at her.  It was intensely exasperating how blue his eyes were.  “And you know, and I know, that there are Vulcan vessels out here that you might have ways of gettin’ a message to if you really wanted to.”

_That_ was a carefully guarded secret.  Of course she would never have admitted to the captain that she had a means of getting messages into and out of _Enterprise_ without resorting to ways that Ensign Sato could detect, but it was the truth.  So far she’d never had cause to use it, but it was there … if required.

Not that she did require it.  The mere idea was absurd.  Reed was a murderer, and should pay the penalty for what he had done.

Her refusal must have shown on her face.  “You’d rather sit back and wait for the funeral?”

“If he chooses to end his own life that is his own responsibility,” she pointed out coolly.  “It would be entirely inappropriate for me to even attempt to help him to evade justice.”

“Not askin’ you to help him evade justice, T’Pol.  I’m askin’ you to see if there might be any way of helpin’ him evade _in_ justice _._   ’Cause I don’t think you or anyone else can pretend it’s right for a guy to die for doin’ a friend a kindness.”

She sighed.  It really was egregiously unfair for his eyes to be that particular shade of blue.

“Will you be here when I come back?” she asked, trying not to sound plaintive.

He twinkled at her.  “S’pose that’ll depend on whether I was ever here in the first place, won’t it?” he replied.

And then she was gazing at the candle flame, a single point of brilliance in the darkness of her quarters.


	13. Archer

He’d always anticipated that there would be times when he’d have to make difficult calls back to Starfleet HQ.  But as he waited for Hoshi to comm him to say that his call was connected, Jon realized that _this_ particular call was one he’d somehow never imagined making. 

He could hardly have avoided knowing that ‘Space is dangerous’.  God knew old Soval had never tired of drumming it into his ears and those of everyone else in Starfleet, as though trying to scare them all into staying within the bounds of the Sol system.  A captain has to make difficult decisions, and sometimes crew are lost, whole ships are lost; events that had happened since the first humans ventured out beyond the breakers, heading for the distant horizon.

‘Dead’… well, ‘dead’ he could have coped with.  They were visiting unknown planets and encountering unknown aliens, and for all his enthusiasm he’d known there was no guarantee that either planets or aliens would be welcoming.

But ‘murdered’….

The Starfleet logo winked off the screen and was replaced by Maxwell’s visage, even as Hoshi’s voice through the comm announced the connection.

The admiral was quick off the mark.  His welcoming smile was tinged with anxiety.  “Jon.  Your comm officer said it was urgent.”

“That’s right, Admiral.”  He looked at his clasped hands on the desk and wondered how the hell to get this said.  “I have to report an – incident.”

“The ship’s secure?”

“Absolutely.” Jon was ashamed of how quickly he said it, eager to snatch at any good news.  “We’re fine.  But… Trip’s dead.  We believe he was murdered.  The man who did it has given a statement to that effect.”

 _“Murdered?”_ Forrest leaned forward in his chair as though doubting the evidence of his ears.  “Who the … was anyone else hurt?”

“The murderer himself.  He required surgery.  His injuries were quite severe.”

Maxwell was pale now.  “How did the intruder get on board?”

The captain drew a deep breath.  “It wasn’t an intruder, Admiral.  It was my Chief Tactical Officer – Lieutenant Reed.”

The shock of this revelation was so great that for a few moments the older man clearly couldn’t find a response to it.  “What the hell happened, Jon?” he got out at last.

In as few words as might be, the captain told the story of the shuttlepod’s mission, the accident that had befallen _Enterprise_ and the discovery that had awaited them when they finally recovered the ‘pod.  “Reed was still alive when we brought her on board,” he ended bitterly, “but he had self-inflicted injuries.  Not fatal.”

The small voice of conscience stung him as he said these last two words.  They hadn’t been fatal, but they certainly would have been had _Enterprise_ arrived even a little later and Phlox been less skilled a surgeon.  Still, describing the scene had brought it back before his mind’s eye in all its horror, and Trip’s death cried out for the perpetrator to be brought to justice.  He had to make sure that happened.  When Reed was taken off the ship into custody he’d issue stern warnings for the man to be watched 24/7, in case he’d hatched any ideas of taking a shorter route out of his well-earned punishment.

“Ten minutes!” It was plain that Maxwell understood the depth of the loss and the extent of the tragedy.  So brief an interval between ‘in time’ and ‘too late’.

Jon bowed his head.  “I can’t believe he did it,” he said, trying not to let his grief take over.  “But he’s admitted it.  T’Pol and I interviewed him and he made a full statement.  Says he’ll repeat it under oath and plead guilty.  Should make the trial a formality.”

“Even with a confession, Jon, it won’t be ‘a formality’. You know that.”  The admiral’s voice was gently chiding.  “In a situation like this, he’ll have to go through a full psych-evaluation.  It could have repercussions through all of Starfleet… make us reevaluate the way we assess our personnel for long-distance spaceflight.”

 _“Malcolm Reed is not insane!”_ His anger broke out.  Anger and grief, grief and anger; it seemed as if one or the other of them had him perpetually in its grip.  “He knew exactly what he was doing.  He wanted to kill and he goddamn succeeded!”

The eyes on the screen watched him compassionately as he fought for self-control.  Finally, when he thought he had it, he continued.

“Who _is_ he, Admiral?  Who did he work for before he came on board _Enterprise_?  I took him on, I thought it didn’t matter, but I should have looked harder, should have….”

“Some good people vouched for him, you know that.” Forrest looked troubled.  “You weren’t to know, Jon.  These things happen.  Seems to me that this was just one coincidence piled on another – the accident to _Enterprise_ , then whatever it was that hit the shuttlepod and ruptured the oxygen cylinder.  If one or the other hadn’t happened, maybe Reed would never have gone over the edge.  Who knows?”

“Yeah.  I could have gone on for the next five years or so with a guy in charge of my ship’s armory who thinks killing people is a neat solution.”

The other man sighed.  “Jon, I’m sorry.  We need to think about how to proceed with this.  You say he’s made a statement?”

“Yes.  I’ll have Hoshi send you the encrypted files – the recordings and the transcripts.  You’ll want the ship to return to Earth, won’t you?”

The reply to that was so long in coming that he knew the admiral was weighing his options.  Finally,

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ll ask Ambassador Soval if there are any Vulcan ships in the vicinity that could rendezvous with you and take Reed off your hands; he’ll probably be so glad to have something like this to gloat over that he’ll jump at the chance.

“In the meantime, I want you, Phlox and anyone else who witnessed the scene of the crime to record full statements of what you saw.  Just observation.  No speculation.  Make sure everyone understands that.  And when you get the notification of the date for the inquiry, make sure _Enterprise_ is held within comm range.

“In addition, I want detailed scans and photographic records of the shuttle sent with those files.  Anything and everything our science people might want to know, or the legal teams might want to use.”

“Legal _teams?_ ” Jon pounced on the word like a hawk.  “Reed doesn’t want a legal team.  He wants to represent himself.”

“He has the option to change his mind,” came the mild reply.  “It’ll take a while to get him home, even with help from the Vulcans.  Plenty of time for him to think better of it and decide he wants professional representation.”

 _Damnation!_   Jon sat back in his chair.  There was no saying what could go wrong when lawyers got involved in something.  They could even get Reed off scot-free, and then nobody at all would pay for Trip’s death.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

“I’ll get on it, Admiral.”

“Go easy on yourself, Jon,” said Maxwell gently, reaching out to close the connection.  “None of this was your fault.  You couldn’t be expected to know what would happen.”

“I’ll make sure you get the files within the next twenty-four hours.  Archer out.”

The picture from HQ winked out, and the Starfleet logo reappeared.

He sat still for perhaps five minutes, and then he left his Ready Room and walked to Sickbay.

Phlox wasn’t there, just a medic who was presumably carrying out some routine duties while he kept an eye on the patient.  Just a crewman whose name he couldn’t remember for the moment, who could be ordered to leave Sickbay and stay outside no matter what he heard from inside.

The thought produced the deed.  The medic – Andrews his name was, Crewman Andrews – was far too overawed to dispute a direct order from his CO.  The double doors hissed shut behind him.

Jon walked into the Intensive Care Unit.

Reed was lying still.  His eyes were shut, and to all appearances he was asleep, but at the soft step beside his bed they opened.

He didn’t look in the least surprised.  Or apprehensive, or anything else.

He just looked … accepting.

They both knew this had to happen.

Jon had his fist bunched for the first blow and was calculating where to land it when the curtain was wrenched back.

“Captain!” Phlox’s voice was a knife blade, cutting open the moment.

It was a question whether he or Reed was more disappointed; they’d both have liked to have gotten it over and done with.  With an effort Jon unclenched his fingers.  They were aching with the lust to hit, to hurt, to pulverize flesh and break bone.

“ _If_ you please,” the doctor said, holding open the curtain for him to leave.  The normally jovial blue eyes were as cold as the heart of an iceberg.

For one insane moment the captain actually wondered whether to take him on.  The doc was a healer, not a fighter.  But then common sense reasserted itself, and he walked silently into the main body of Sickbay. 

God knew what sort of communication passed between Phlox and Reed in the few seconds that passed before the Denobulan followed him out and gestured fiercely towards the doors.

Jon didn’t have the authority or the heart to argue.  He was suddenly exhausted and ashamed, and put up no resistance when Phlox followed him out as though literally seeing him off the premises.

Andrews was gone, probably glad enough to be ordered away.  After a glance up and down the corridor to make sure no-one was within earshot, the doctor grabbed the captain by the arm.  His grip was hard enough to hurt.  Probably quite intentionally.  When he spoke, his voice was the sternest Jon had ever heard it.

“Captain Archer, I understand that this is an enormously stressful time for you, both professionally and personally.  I understand that Commander Tucker was a personal friend to you for a very long time.  For those reasons alone I will refrain from making a note of this incident in my official report.  But as the Chief Medical Officer of this ship, I am ordering you never to enter Sickbay again unless I or Sub-Commander T’Pol are present, until Lieutenant Reed is taken into custody.  And if you disobey that order I will declare you unfit for command and have you relieved of duty.”

Some of Jon wanted to hit back, to yell things about _protecting a goddamn murderer_ and _someone’s got to see justice done_.  But the decent side of him said that this wasn’t the way things should be done, and the meaner, colder side of him said that a story of assault by his own captain would be a godsend to Reed’s legal team – because of course the bastard would decide that what he’d done hadn’t been so terrible after all, because it was done for the right reasons, _and Trip would still be dead_ , and maybe the inquiry would decide that it wouldn’t be appropriate anymore for the book to be thrown at the murderer after he’d endured the trauma of having his own commanding officer beat the crap out of him when he was too sick to resist.

“I hear you, Doc,” he said flatly.

Then, because he wasn’t on duty and had nothing else to do, he went to his private Mess and allowed his steward to bring him a meal which he ate without knowing what it was, while all the time his gaze lay on the motionless stars outside the viewing port and he pictured Reed’s frozen dead body floating among them.


	14. T'Pol

Instead of eating in the Mess, she took her salad back to her quarters at lunchtime. 

This was just as well, because the anticipated call arrived just a few minutes before she was due to return to duty.

The man on the screen was not one she could ever remember seeing before.  Oldish in Human terms, with short-cropped gray hair and a craggy, expressionless face.

“Sub-Commander T’Pol,” he said without preamble.  “I’m informed you wish to talk business with me.”

She laid aside the remains of her meal and studied him carefully.  “You are a member of Starfleet’s ‘Section 31’.”

“Harris.”  It undoubtedly wasn’t his real name and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her anything more, but that was enough for the time being.  “You want to discuss Malcolm Reed.”

“A former operative of yours, I believe.”

The edge of the teeth showed in what wasn’t a smile.  “When he handed in his resignation from the Section, he made himself very clear that he wanted nothing further to do with us, and I don’t suppose his attitude’s changed significantly since.  He abandoned any claim to our protection that day, Sub-Commander.  He’s on his own.”

“I have every reason to believe he would spurn any offer of your ‘protection’,” she replied calmly.  “I think the issue is not his protection, but yours.”

The silence told her he was still listening.

“He is being returned to Earth for psych-evaluation prior to a tribunal.  He faces a charge of murder in the first degree.”

“The _T’Krinah_ is due to rendezvous with _Enterprise_ in three days to take him off,” he said promptly.  Not the shadow of a smile betrayed his satisfaction at possessing that information before Captain Archer did.

“It’s gratifying that the High Command was able to oblige Starfleet in the matter,” she replied blandly.  “But both you and I know that when the details of the attack are made public, the lieutenant will face stringent questioning.  He may even be subjected to periods of intense interrogation to uncover what flaws in his character drove him to such an act.  It is not one to which most Humans would resort so readily – or perform so efficiently, in the circumstances.”

“He was trained by the Section.” Both face and voice expressed confident satisfaction.  “They’ll get nothing out of him.”

“They will get nothing he does not wish them to get.”

Possibly nothing less than her V’Shar training would have enabled her to detect the tiny prickle of unease as that thought registered.

“I imagine that he possesses much information that would cause the Section considerable – _embarrassment_ , were he to deliberately or involuntarily break down under questioning.”  She paused, to let him assess the possible magnitude of ‘embarrassment’ that Reed’s knowledge would be capable of causing.  “It seems to me that it might be a sensible precaution to avoid even the possibility of that happening.”

A grim smile appeared on the face opposite.  “If you’re trying to make me interested in staging a rescue, Sub-Commander, better leave off giving me all these excellent reasons for having him killed out of hand.”

“I do not wish him to be ‘rescued’.”  T’Pol paused again, uncharacteristically hesitant, feeling her way through a concept she hardly understood herself.  “I want … justice to be done.”

“‘Justice’?”  His eyebrows rose sardonically.  “I thought the inquiry was supposed to take care of that.”

“It will not.”

He leaned forward.  “Is that because you have a problem with Starfleet legal procedures?”

“No.  It is because this is outside the scope of Starfleet legal procedures.  It requires … a different kind of solution.”

“And you think I might have that kind of solution to hand.”

“If you do not, I do not know anyone who has.”

He sat back again.  His eyes were cold.  “Just so we’re talking the same language, you’re not actually suggesting that the Section arrange for a little ‘accident’ to happen to him while he’s in Vulcan custody.”

“I’m sure we’re talking the same language when I inform you that if I wanted that to happen, it would already have been arranged.”  Her own eyes were as cold as his as she leaned forward.  “Answer me one question: when he was in your employ, did Malcolm Reed trust you?”

Harris actually laughed.  “I imagine you already know the answer to that, Sub-Commander but for what it’s worth: No, he didn’t.  He knew far too much for that.”

She smiled like a _sehlat_.  “Then, Mister Harris, I believe we can indeed do business.”


	15. Sato

The door chime brought her out of bed, wide awake on the instant.  “Who’s there?”

“It’s Travis.” 

She flitted across the room to admit him, unconcerned about her state of relative undress; it was too urgent a moment to worry about modesty.  He stepped inside and went on, in a low, urgent voice,   “I got Eloise to give me the nod.  The _T’Krinah_ has arrived.  We’re just about to dock.”

“The Vulcans?” She pulled on her tracksuit bottoms; she was already wearing her vest.

He nodded.  “A _D’Kyr_ -class cruiser.  The captain hasn’t said anything about it.  Guess it’s pretty obvious why that is.”

“Malcolm.”  She spoke through shut teeth.

They still didn’t know what had happened.  The whole situation had been quite surreal.  Captain Archer had behaved for the last three days as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, making no reference to either Trip or Malcolm during his brief visits to the Bridge.  For most of the time he’d remained out of view in his Ready Room, leaving T’Pol in charge – a role which she fulfilled with quiet equanimity, but being no more forthcoming than her CO.  Certainly her cool, remote expression whenever anyone had cause to speak to her suggested that should any unsuitable topic of conversation raise its head, her answer would be unhelpful to say the least.

“They’ll come to the starboard docking port.  We’d better hurry.”

“I’m ready.”

They left her room together.  It was after midnight, ship time, and few people were about to see them hurrying down the darkened corridors.

“You do know the captain’s not goin’ to like this,” he warned, low-voiced.

“I don’t give a damn.” And just then, she didn’t.  However pissed off Jon might be about it, for the sake of her sanity she wanted to see Malcolm one more time.  Even if she couldn’t get to speak to him, she … well, she just had to see him, that was all.  Maybe then a whole lot of things might get miraculously clearer.

They turned the corner at the junction just short of the docking port and saw that they weren’t the first arrivals after all.  There was a party waiting for the signal from outside that the clamps were engaged and the door should be opened.  At a guess, the exchange would be brief.

The captain was there, and T’Pol, and two Security crewmen.  Between them, standing braced a little shakily, was Malcolm.

Hoshi’s eyes filled with tears.  How could, how _could_ Jon have done this?

_Enterprise_ carried electronic handcuffs for use in emergencies.  It was plain, however, that the prisoner was not trusted in a device with whose workings he was so intimately acquainted.  Someone in Engineering must have been tasked with devising something simpler and more brutally effective.  A duranium bar lay across the tactical officer’s shoulders and his wrists were enclosed in a shackle at either end.  These were not locked, but welded shut.  He would have to be cut out of it.

“Oh, man,” Travis breathed, appalled.

The captain must have heard them arrive.  He spun around, scowling.  “You’re dismissed!”

T’Pol said something to him very quietly, and then turned to the two ensigns.  “You may take your farewells of Mister Reed.  Please be quick.”

The scowl didn’t leave the captain’s face, but he didn’t countermand the instruction.

Feeling as though she were walking in a nightmare from which she couldn’t awaken, Hoshi almost tiptoed towards the motionless lieutenant.  He’d been staring at the deck plating, but as she and Travis drew level with him he raised his head.  She thought she’d never seen such sadness on a human face.

“Sir, I–” Travis was evidently lost for words.  He kept staring at those shackles, but finally he dragged his eyes back to Malcolm’s, and summoned resolution.  “Sir, I don’t know what’s happened, but – I’m sure there’s been some kind of misunderstanding, and – well, it’s been an honor working with you, sir.”

“Likewise, Ensign,” said Malcolm quietly.  His gaze moved to Hoshi, and for all her skills in communication, verbal or otherwise, she couldn’t read it.

She hadn’t been sure, till then, what she was going to do.  But there was one thing she knew she’d spend the rest of her life wishing she had done, if she didn’t take the chance right now.

Under the captain’s furious stare, she stepped forward and kissed the Englishman full on the lips, cupping his face with her hands.

He responded; for one instant, she was sure he responded.  Then he stepped back, gently freeing himself.  “Thank you, Hoshi,” he whispered, holding her eyes with his own.

The lights flashed on the control panel, indicating that pressure had equalized outside.  T’Pol entered the code, and the docking port door slid back, revealing a stiffly formal Vulcan officer waiting at the other side.  Two armed and equally stiffly formal guards flanked him, clearly waiting to take over custody of the Human prisoner.

Without waiting to be pushed or ordered, Malcolm walked forward through the door.  As the guards closed on him from either side, he turned as well as he could for the immobilizing bar across his shoulders and looked back at the officers from _Enterprise_ that he was seeing for the last time.  He seemed to straighten, and summoned a look of resolution as though wanting them to remember him as a Starfleet officer rather than a prisoner.

“Thank you,” he said again, very low.  “And – I’m sorry.”

“Captain.”  The Vulcan officer now in charge of him nodded briefly, and Captain Archer nodded back.  No more words than that were exchanged, and the last sight Hoshi had of Malcolm was the guards turning him back to walk into the _T’Krinah_ – doubtless to some place of secure custody, where they might or might not go to the trouble of cutting him out of the shackles in which his own commanding officer had ordered he be placed.

The docking port door closed again.  The seals engaged.  Moments later the blinking lights indicated that there was nothing but space beyond it.

The two security guards were no longer required.  At a word from the captain they walked away, their faces carefully neutral.  After a moment, Archer walked away too.  He didn’t say anything, but then it was hard to imagine what the hell he possibly could have said at such a moment.

T’Pol stood for a moment, watching the two stunned ensigns.  “It’s late,” she observed quietly.  “You should get some rest.  The captain will make a general announcement concerning Lieutenant Reed later today.”

Travis waved a hand towards the docking port.  “You think _anything_ he could say would make that right, Sub-Commander?  What we just saw?”

“‘Right’ is a subjective term at best, Ensign.  ‘Understandable’ may be closer.  I suggest you wait until you have the facts at your disposal before you make a judgment.”

Hoshi dashed a hand across her eyes.  The tears there now were of pure anger.  How had she ever thought she might have feelings for that inhumane bastard who called himself a captain?  “So what now?  We just carry on and pretend nothing’s happened?  Like we didn’t see anything at all tonight?”

“You ‘carry on’ as the Starfleet professional you are until you have sufficient information to understand what you saw.  Which, as a matter of fact, you were not supposed to see at all.”

“But we _did_ see it,” Hoshi responded furiously.  “I saw it and I’ll never forget it.  That was _Malcolm_ , not some – some dangerous animal!  What the heck kind of justification is there for _welding_ him into that, that … damned _restraint?_ ”

She thought for an instant that T’Pol was going to give her a reason.  From the tiny pause, she knew that there was a reason, and that she wasn’t going to hear it.  “The captain had his reasons,” the Vulcan said flatly.  “The restraint was uncomfortable, but not inhumane.  Mister Reed will be released from it as soon as he has been safely secured on board the _T’Krinah._ ”

“‘Safely secured’?” Travis echoed, his face as incredulous as his voice.  “Ma’am, this is Lieutenant Reed we’re talking about here!  The captain could order him to take a stroll on the hull without an EV suit and he’d just walk out and do it!  Why the hell has he got to be put in restraints?”

The sub-commander’s summing gaze traveled from one to the other of them.  “The captain will make a ship-wide announcement first thing this morning,” she said quietly.  “Until then, what I am about to tell you will remain between the two of you, and you will neither disclose it to any other member of the crew nor make any mention of it on any form of media.  Once the announcement has been made, I imagine it will be a topic of general discussion.”

She paused.  Hoshi received the fleeting, ridiculous impression that she was listening to something.  Or somebody.

“Lieutenant Reed has admitted to murdering Commander Tucker.”


	16. Reed

The _T’Krinah_ was fast.  It had a couple of other stops to make, but only a few days passed before it settled into orbit above the settlement that was generally referred to by the name of the star around which its planet circled – Proxima Centauri.

He had been treated with impersonal care during his captivity.  Once released from his shackles, he had been given food and water; presumably his warders thought that if he’d been treated with such shocking inhumanity as to be shackled, he must have been deprived of sustenance as well.  He was even given a PADD containing assorted Human books to ease his boredom, though he didn’t read any of them.  His prison (plainly not designed as one – presumably Vulcan ships didn’t have any requirement for a brig as such) was plain but comfortable.  A monitor watched him constantly, but he was indifferent to that; it was an obvious concomitant to allowing him such luxuries as a blanket, which could so very easily be ripped into strips and put to a very different use if he’d been unobserved for long enough to set about it.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought of it.  Particularly in the long dark reaches of the early mornings aboard _Enterprise_ , sometimes the idea had seemed almost irresistibly appealing. But his whole will was set against it. He would endure the trial, and somehow endure the punishment afterwards.  Then – well, then he’d see.

The door opened with the softest of swishes rather than the pneumatic hiss of those aboard _Enterprise_.  An officer and two guards appeared.  They might covertly disapprove of the lengths to which Captain Archer had gone to ensure he wouldn’t jump ship before his trial, but they were still taking no chances: a pair of electronic handcuffs immobilised him quite effectively.

He supposed there was really no point in offering his parole.

They escorted him to a shuttle, which transported him, his guards and a couple of other people down to the planet.  The settlement was currently in darkness, a scatter of lights below which came rapidly closer.

The shuttle landed efficiently on a landing pad, and after a few moments the door opened and everyone on board was free to exit; the planet must be Minshara-class, for no breathing aids were issued.  As he stepped down onto the tarmac, feeling grains of sand crunch beneath the soles of his boots, he sniffed the air.  It smelled faintly scorched, and there was the low thunder of heavy machinery.  Proxima One had been established in an area that was rich in mineral deposits.  Presumably mining was still the chief industry in the region.

He was taken with the minimum of fuss to a sturdy outbuilding of what looked like the central complex.  A bland room received him, and the door was locked behind him – he heard the snick of the heavy wards going home.

At least he had light, if what it illuminated was not luxurious: a bed with a mattress, and a pail for body wastes.  There were no covers on the bed, but the room wasn’t cold so that wouldn’t be a problem.  Unsurprisingly, there was no window.

He stretched out on the rather lumpy mattress and tried to relax.  Presumably the cuffs had been left on him because he wasn’t going to be here for any length of time.  At a guess, there was an established routine for handling prisoners being shipped through here.  He was just another item in the process.

Idleness was his worst enemy.  It offered too much time for thinking, too much time for remembering, too much time for regret.

There had been good times, many of them, if not as many as he’d hoped there would be when _Enterprise_ left Spacedock.  He had a lot to look back on with gratitude, and he _was_ grateful; honestly and deeply grateful, for all that his career had ended in ignominy.  He’d worked with some amazing people, and had written a few lines on the page of _Enterprise_ ’s voyage into history.  If the paragraph was shorter than he might have hoped for, and ended somewhat abruptly, still when he looked back on the event that had brought it to this sudden close he couldn’t feel that he would have done any differently if he’d had the chance to do it all again but had no more information than he’d had at the time.  He could understand – easily – why Captain Archer now nursed such a relentless hatred towards him, but you had to be there to understand the pressures.  You had to have watched someone suffocate.  You had to care enough about someone to want to spare them that, whatever the cost to yourself.

After much anguished soul-searching, therefore, he still stood by his decision; at the time, his action had seemed justified.  Obviously events had proved him utterly wrong, but he’d had no way of knowing that at the time.  His regrets weren’t for his actions, though the guilt for Trip’s death lay on him like a crushing weight.  (He could, and of course did, regret bitterly that the ship hadn’t arrived ten minutes earlier, or that he hadn’t waited ten minutes longer, but to dwell incessantly on that was the route to madness.  She _hadn’t_ arrived ten minutes earlier and he _couldn’t_ have waited ten minutes longer, and that was it.)  His regrets were all for the pain he’d caused to other people, for the loss to _Enterprise_ and to Trip’s family and to the whole development of the warp drive, to which he was certain the talented engineer would have made an enormous contribution if he’d lived.  Those, he regretted with his whole soul.  His own pain and grief were already accepted as things he would have to live with, lifelong.

He did his best to think of his future with stoicism rather than hope.  It would be difficult, but he’d co-operate fully.  He’d get through somehow.

_I may come in handy after all_ , whispered a voice at the back of his mind.  He silenced it.  He was finished with that side of him, finished once and for all.  He’d endure as the Starfleet officer he was, not the twisted bastard he had been.  He’d remember Hoshi’s kiss – sweet and unexpected and anguished, but a kiss for Malcolm, and all that Malcolm could have been if he hadn’t allowed himself that fatal moment of despair.

_You won’t_ be _a Starfleet officer when this is over.  Then, we’ll see._

=/\=

For all his hurrying thoughts, he must have slept eventually.

Even now, however, he still slept as lightly as a cat.  He was on his feet almost before the lock had finished turning.

He expected Starfleet personnel, but the two men who entered were not in Starfleet uniforms.  Instinct was screaming warnings at him even before he saw the way they were looking at him: _predators._

_Think and you’re dead._ He rushed the bigger of the two.  His cuffed hands were all but useless, but he unleashed a couple of vicious kicks at the man’s face, forcing the bastard to back up as he fended them off.  But the other intruder was armed, and the end was never in doubt.  The pistol spoke sharply, its report muffled, and he felt a piercing pain in his side. 

Automatically his hands dropped to the place, clumsily detaching the dart that had stood in his flesh.  Not a bullet, but that realisation woke horror in him that only grew as his senses started to slide.  A bullet would have been bad enough, but this still meant something had gone wrong – horribly wrong, but in a different way.  A hired killer would have used a projectile or, more likely, an energy weapon, and Starfleet Security wouldn’t use a bloody tranquilliser dart....

His knees buckled.  Slowly he slid to the floor, deep pain waking in his half-healed thigh muscles as he tried with all his remaining strength to make his legs move.  He struggled to stay upright, but his body wouldn’t obey him any longer.

The drug took over.  He lay, completely aware and unable to do a thing to help himself as the two men warily closed in on him.

He’d felt like this before.  Once before.  If only he could remember when, and where....

One of them – the one with the pistol – unhooked something from his belt.  A pouch, that disgorged a soft fine net.  It was much bigger and stronger than it looked, for he flicked it with one expert movement and it spread across the floor, ready for the prisoner to be bundled up in it.

More sparks of memory fired, igniting dread.  Not understood, but horribly real.

As they rolled him over into the waiting mesh, he got a better look at the gunman.  The face behind the beard was hard, unmoved; this was a job he’d done before so many times that he no longer even saw his victim’s fear and bewilderment.  No longer gave a damn, if indeed he ever had.

_I’ve seen you before – Fucking hell, when, when, WHEN?_

They picked up the net between them.  He hung in it, as helpless as a kitten.  The cord cut into the flesh of his face, and all he could do was whimper his bewilderment soundlessly into an uncaring void.

He’d co-operated!  He’d made a full statement, told everything – well, almost everything; there had been the fact that he’d been ordered to drink that bourbon, but he wasn’t revealing that, for a number of reasons.  He’d been willing to stand trial, willing to plead guilty, willing to serve his sentence.  Even willing to lie still while his captain beat the daylights out of him, if that paid even a little of his debts.  What more was he being asked to endure?

They carried him out into the night.  The wind had got up, and whined across the landing pad, sand-laden.  It coated his tongue, which was lolling out of his open mouth.

The Vulcan shuttle was gone.  A few other craft were parked up, but the place was deserted.

They carried him towards a small vessel waiting at the far side of the landing pad.  Lights woke on it as they arrived, and a door opened in the side.  A narrow ramp slid down onto the tarmac and he was carried on board without fanfare and dumped on the floor – not roughly, but without any particular care.  The deck beneath him shuddered to engines coming to life, and his captors were hardly in their seats before it canted.  He was being taken from Proxima, taken from Starfleet’s authority, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

_Yet_ , he amended, fiercely pulling himself together.  _Somebody_ wanted _something_ from him.  If they’d wanted him dead he’d already be dog-meat.  In situations like this there was always a deal on the table.  It only remained to work out how to play whatever unknown cards fate might have dealt him when he finally got to see his hand.

_Now you’re talking,_ said the voice in his head, grinning.  _Let me out to play and we might still get out of here._

Malcolm made no answer.  If that was what it took that was what he’d do, but somehow he was going to work his way back to Starfleet custody to stand trial.  A man of honour paid his debts.

Nobody took any notice of him during the short flight.  Shortly he felt the judder of docking, and knew that he was being taken off the planet altogether.  A blade of despair pried at his resolve, but he beat it down.  _There are ways and means, there are always ways and means.  Just stay alive.  Whatever you have to do, stay alive._

Docking was evidently completed without a hitch.  As the pilot went through post-flight checks, the two men picked up the net again.  And as the bearded gunman bent close, recognition finally came, almost stopping his heart.

“Don’t you worry none, your Lordship.” The calloused hand patted his cheek playfully.  “’First time I ever put one back, but we’ll manage.  And we’ll make sure you’re good ’n ready before we drop you in.  Mister Harris said to make sure you knew that, so’s you wouldn’t worry none.”

He would have screamed, but he no longer had the capability.  He simply lay, silent and despairing, as they lowered him carefully into a stasis tank.  Maybe it was inevitable.  After all, life moves in circles.  And now at the end he was going back to the beginning.

He wasn’t going to stand trial. He had no cards and there was no game.  He was simply going to vanish.  Maybe what waited for him then would be some kind of payment of his debts, but if so he’d never know about it; he would be long past all that.  Only blind Justice would ever know if the scales had balanced in the end.

_Time for some of that Vulcan stoicism you were so keen on, Malcolm._ He tried to ignore Jag’s bitter laughter.

The last act was the application of a hypospray to his neck.  He would sleep, and then he would wake, and by that time he would no longer be Malcolm Reed at all.

As his sight slowly began darkening he watched the lid close.  As soon as the seals clicked shut there was the soft hiss of air injected from the tank alongside it. 

_Breathe._

He had no option.

_Breathe_.

He could hold his breath until he passed out, and then as soon as he was unconscious his body would take over and he would start to breathe again.

_Breathe._

His pulse slowed.  He was warm, and comfortable, and growing very sleepy.

_Breathe._

He said his goodbyes to his life.  It had been good, now he came to look back, and he’d enjoyed a lot of it.

_Breathe._

'I’m sorry, Trip.'

_Breathe._

He was glad he’d had the chance to kiss Hoshi.

_Breathe._

_‘Slán abhaile.’ ‘Safe home.’_

_Breathe._

_Breathe._

_Breathe._

_Sleep._


	17. Lacey

“Coming up on the first drop zone now,” shouted the pilot’s voice through the internal comm.  “He awake yet?”

Ben gave the occupant of the net a cursory glance.  “He’s coming around.”

They weren’t stupid.  The guy’s wrists were firmly tied together and he was securely bundled up in the net again.  He wasn’t going to be happy when he woke up, and Ben for one didn’t want an unhappy crazy running loose around the shuttle.

The two new candidates were sitting on the bench opposite.  There had been a time when both of them would have looked to him as though they were hardly out of diapers, let alone ready for what was about to come, but that was very long ago.  Now they were just items he had to drop safely and leave, and maybe in three months’ time they’d be alive and maybe they wouldn’t, but that was just the way the system worked.  It was nothing to do with him.

The routine never varied.  (Well, never until today.)  Two candidates, two drop zones.  Usually the candidates were male; now and again there was one male and one female.  Very occasionally there were two females.  This was one of those times.

The guy in the net had to be dropped at the first zone.  The records apparently said that was where he’d been inserted the first time, so presumably it was felt that he’d stand a better chance in his old hunting grounds.

 _Eeny, meeny..._ Lacey looked across at the two new candidates.  He didn’t know their names and didn’t care, but he pointed to the slender, lovely Asian one. “You go with him.”  Maybe they’d have time to fuck before the hunters came; the onboard cameras monitored the stranded Humans’ progress for a short while before breaking orbit, just to see how they seemed to be managing.  It’d be good for a laugh, and she’d be more worth watching.  Even from high above, the cameras were pretty good at picking up detail.

Her gaze had been fixed on the crazy ever since he’d been brought aboard trussed like a chicken.  She was pale, and watched him like he was about to bite.

Maybe she wasn’t so far wrong, at that.

“His Lordship here won’t hurt you none,” Lacey said, not trying hard enough to hide his amusement.  “They say he’s a real nice guy when he ain’t all tied up.  ’Matter of fact, he might be the best chance you got of stayin’ alive.”

“‘His Lordship’?” Her gaze snapped to him.  She thought her fear wasn’t perfectly obvious to him, but they were all afraid by the time they got here.  Even his Lordship had been, all those years ago, a cocky little Brit with his high-and-mighty upper-class accent.  Been snarling a different tune by the time they’d picked him up again, though.

The eyes of the man in the net snapped open suddenly, and swiveled towards him.  He knew that look.  Pure hatred, void of any humanity.  Just like every crazy when they were picked up for processing.  It had only taken a few days of breathing the stuff stored in those air tanks, and he’d been back right where he started.  Worked like a charm.

He leaned down and patted the guy’s shoulder.  “Not much longer now, pal, and you’ll be back with your buddies,” he whispered.  “Maybe you can show the little lady how it is down there.  Make it a little easier for her.”

The Fleeter’s lips writhed back, and he lunged, sawing his teeth uselessly against the cords as he tried to bite.  Ben chuckled and sat back.  “He’ll calm down when you let him out,” he assured the ensign.  “Just make sure you do what he wants and you’ll be just fine.” _Includin’ gettin’ down on your knees and givin’ him some as soon as he starts pawin’ your ass.  That’ll sure put him in the mood for keepin’ you alive._

The shuttle settled in the usual meadow.  Lacey and his helper Ned donned the respirators and face masks, opened the door and then lifted the crazy and carried him out, dropping him in the grass ten meters or so from the ramp.  They watched his eyes rove, suspicious and wondering.  His tongue flicked out between the cords, licking at the air, tasting it.

“Out’cha come, lady.  Unless you’ve changed your mind…”  Of course she wouldn’t.  Pride had gotten her this far, and the implication that she might chicken out at the last minute was the spur she needed to get her stepping out of the doorway.  She seemed to need no spur, however.  She squared her shoulders and spared one glance back at the other ensign, to give her the ‘thumbs up’ for good luck.

Ben shrugged mentally.  It’d take more than good luck to get them through this.  They’d have to be tough, brave and determined.  And above all, quick on the uptake.

He handed over the knife, the only thing she was allowed to take with her.  Maybe it would keep her alive, maybe it wouldn’t.  Maybe the Fleeter would fuck her and then eat her with his furry buddies.  Maybe he’d still be alive next time, waiting with the hunters for the next delivery.  Maybe he’d live for years, never realizing he wasn’t one of them, never remembering who he’d used to be.

They got back into the shuttle and watched her walk across to the struggling guy in the net.  She hesitated for half a second, then started cutting the cords.  She was even talking to him, but her voice was too low for them to catch the words.  Maybe she thought it’d calm him down a bit before he got out.  Ned leaned down and picked up the stun-rifle, though, just in case.

As soon as the crazy felt the net start to give way, he started fighting to get free in earnest.  Soon he had his upper body out, but then he paused, looking at the woman carefully.  After a minute, he started smelling her.  Then something strange happened to his face.  You couldn’t call it a smile, because wolves don’t smile, but his expression changed.  There was … yes, you could call it happiness if you wanted to.  Tenderness.  Protectiveness.  He leaned up and licked her face, and she had the brains to let him do it and not pull away; she even stroked the side of his face, almost as though she knew him.  As though she cared.

Then he turned around and looked at the shuttle.  There was no mistaking his expression now.

“Time to go,” said the pilot, who had been watching events through his side viewscreen and didn’t want to die.

“Suits me,” said Ned, who didn’t either.

“Ah, who cares.”  Ben shrugged.  He’d rather have liked to watch a bit longer, just in case, but chances were that his Lordship’s hatred would stay stronger than his lust while the shuttle was still on the ground.  Besides, the ship’s cameras would be tracking them for a while, and there was always a chance; it would be fun to watch how the two of them handled it, the crazy and the new kid on the block.

They closed the door.  It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to locate the second drop zone, so it was hardly worth taking the masks off or venting the atmosphere to be replaced with clean.

The other ensign sat immobile while the shuttle lifted and flew.  Nobody said anything to her.  She’d survive or she wouldn’t, and she didn’t matter until she was hauled back inside as now valuable cargo, if she lived that long.  There was always a supply of clever loners looking for adventure outside the wire, and thinking they were tough enough to handle it.  They thought they were being left down there as some kind of survival test; well, that was true enough in a way, but it was so much more than that.  This world was the Section’s way of creating obedient killers for its Dirty Tricks squads, and if this one survived long enough to be hauled up and brought back for reconditioning she’d just be the latest crazy in a line of them.

Just like that guy had been.  Never quite safe again; never _entirely_ normal.

They dropped her off.  She waved as they left, now looking a bit forlorn and pathetic down there on the slope beside the river.

The hiss from the vents said that the atmosphere was being replaced with stored, clean air.  As soon as it stopped Ben removed his mask and reached for a beer.  He had no idea who the guy was or why he’d had to be returned, and no interest either.  All that mattered was the handsome number of extra credits there’d be in his pay check when he got home.

His Lordship’d be a minor complication when they came back, if the candidate had made it through and he was still alive.  Just an extra shot with the stun rifle should take care of him though, and there’d soon be a new piece of tail for him to mate with.  Not a bad life, when you came to think about it.  Nice and simple.  And you never knew: with him down there, maybe there'd be more survivors for a few years...

The first mouthful of beer went down Ben's throat, tasting of hops and success.  At the other side of the shuttle, Ned replaced the stun rifle, scratched his belly and yawned; then he reached for his own beer, and they leaned across to clink bottles, celebrating another drop made without a hitch.  As the shuttle rose, the level light of the rising sun lanced through the windows.  Down below, if anyone bothered to look up, the sky would be a cloudless, duck-egg blue.  A perfect morning.

The pilot banked the shuttle, taking it for one last pass across the meadow where the first drop had been made.  It was empty. Only the remains of the net lay in the grass, and a few months would see that rot away to nothing.  For sure, nobody was fool enough to take the risk of retrieving it; the surrounding woods looked empty, but they damn well weren’t.

“We’re all done here,” came the comment through the internal comm.  “Time to go.”

“Suits me.” Ben rose and made his way forward to the co-pilot’s seat.  Ahead of him the curve of the planet’s rim was already visible as the shuttle lifted skyward, and the blue was darkening as the atmosphere thinned.

He dropped into the worn leather and thumbed the comm to external. The flick to turn on the scrambler was done without thought. “Message to Mister Harris,” he said, without preamble.

“The wolf’s gone home.”

 

**The End.**


	18. The Epilogue - T'Pol

“Captain.”

He rose when she walked into the Mess to join him for breakfast.  He always did; good manners were bred into him, and on some days lately he even thought to smile.

Today was not one of the days.

Perhaps it was just as well.  The contents of the message she’d received (through the ordinary mail channels this time) would be unsettling for him in some ways, for all that he’d been eager to get them by any means possible.

The news that Lieutenant Reed had vanished mere hours after being safely handed over to the security staff at Proxima One had been a crushing blow to him.  He’d monitored events daily as the search went on, but with diminishing hope.  The day the search had been stepped down from ‘active’ had roused him to rage at Admiral Forrest in a way that had taxed even the admiral’s forbearance, but without result; there were no traces, and pursuing a man who had all the galaxy to hide in was a waste of resources.  Although deeply sympathetic, the admiral had been adamant.

Privately she thought that Forrest knew perfectly well that as an ex-Section 31 operative, Reed would have become untraceable as soon as he’d left Proxima One.  The captain, however, had never known of that facet of his Tactical Officer’s past.  All that mattered to him was that Reed had escaped justice, as he’d always feared he might, and Trip’s death was to go unavenged after all – the worst possible outcome.

But _Enterprise_ ’s voyage continued, and the steady routine of it gradually pushed his rage and frustration into the background.  Doubtless it still smoldered there, but he had a thousand other things to think of, and slowly things had returned to something approximating normal.

They could not be quite as they had been.  For one thing, the ship had a new Chief Engineer.  His eyes were not of the right shade of blue, and he was from Southern California, but he was perfectly competent, if not a genius with a warp engine.  (Though it was hardly fair to blame him for the latter; that level of inspiration was the province of special people, of whom there are always too few in the world.)

A new Tactical Officer had also, eventually, been appointed and would be joining them shortly.  The captain had viewed the applications from the last three candidates and vetoed one who had been English.

Also there was a new communications officer.  Ensign Sato had tendered her resignation the day Lieutenant Reed’s disappearance had been announced, citing personal reasons.  Captain Archer had not tried to dissuade her, and since her going Ensign Mayweather had been very quiet, his warm smile considerably rarer.  It would not be wholly surprising if his resignation too appeared on the captain’s desk shortly.

But the replacements worked very well, and doubtless in time the fabric of life on board would heal.  The scars would remain, but life go on, if in a slightly different direction. It was wholly illogical to regret what might have been….

She waited until the captain’s steward had placed the _plomeek_ broth in front of her and retired.  Then, even before picking up her spoon, she told the captain that her enquiries had borne fruit.

He laid down his own knife and fork at once.  A look of almost starving anticipation appeared on his face.

“This is unverified information,” she went on quietly.  “The sender will not be traceable and no more will be forthcoming.”

“He’s dead?” he asked eagerly.

“Effectively.” She paused, and looked at him with some distaste for that awful hope that one of his former Bridge Officers was no longer living.  “He has apparently been taken by a previous acquaintance to an uninhabited planet and left there.  It is well away from normal shipping lanes, and a warning beacon is in orbit.  Nobody will land there, even if he could somehow possibly contrive to send out an appeal for rescue.”

A cold gleam of satisfaction brightened in the hazel eyes as he contemplated his erstwhile Armory Officer’s terrible fate: abandoned and alone, left to eke out the rest of his days far from the sound of a human voice.  However much of a loner Reed might be, Humans were an intrinsically gregarious species.  Deprived of the company of their own kind, they inevitably lost their reason. The captain seemed to find a quite intense fulfillment in the prospect of Reed’s eventual death in loneliness and despair, whether by his own hand or by natural causes. There had been no trial, but it was very obvious to her that Archer felt now that there was to be justice after all.  He probably perceived it as poetic.

“Well, seems like someone else knew what he was too,” he said finally, with a grim smile.  “I’ll drink to their solution to the problem, whoever they are!”  He swallowed a mouthful of orange juice.

Hers remained in the glass, untouched.  It seemed anything but appropriate to toast the end of _Enterprise_ ’s voyage as it might have been, but for a ruptured oxygen cylinder and a malfunction in an alien ship’s steering system.  Or to rejoice in the loss of a fine officer and a basically good man who’d simply made a terrible mistake.

Sadness was an emotion, but that was all she felt as she looked across the table at Jonathan Archer.  Whether he realized it or not, the whole course of his captaincy, his nature and his life had been changed.

She had not given him the whole of the text.  It had been cryptic in the extreme of course, but from the little revealed in it allied with their previous conversation she knew that Harris had done his best to reconcile the paradox.  Malcolm Reed could not have been saved, but the being who had once gone by that name was living a life in which he had once apparently known a kind of happiness, and perhaps could again.

The V’Shar had suspected something like this was happening beneath Section 31’s veil of secrecy, but there had never been any shred of proof.  Harris had trusted her enough to reveal part of it, and she would deserve that trust.  The message, already triple-encrypted and untraceable, had been destroyed before she left her quarters.

Trip had used to sit in the chair beside the viewing port.  She could almost see him there, leaning back and lifting his glass with a wry smile. “Well then, here’s to Agent Harris!” he drawled.

She lifted her own. At least she could drink to that.

_‘To Agent Harris.’_

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to get your comments ... I think....


End file.
